Azure Firewall vs Sophos XG comparison

Microsoft and Sophos are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Microsoft is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.2, while Sophos is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3. Microsoft holds a 2.2% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Sophos’s 11.5% mindshare. Additionally, 82% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Sophos users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Sophos XG and Azure Firewall compete in the network security category. Based on feature richness and user-friendliness, Sophos XG seems to have the upper hand with its comprehensive features.

Features: Sophos XG provides essential features like web and application filters, wireless integration, and email protection. It includes Sophos Sandstorm for sandboxing, URL filtering, and IPS, facilitating user-friendly monitoring and management of network security. Azure Firewall focuses on cloud-native capabilities with features like DDoS protection and centralized management. It integrates with Azure services supporting enhanced scalability.

Room for Improvement: Sophos XG could enhance email protection rules, response time in technical support, and simplify VPN and reporting functions. Challenges with HTTPS traffic handling and application filters are noted. Azure Firewall could improve its threat intelligence, expand its feature set to match other next-generation firewalls, and better integrate traditional enterprise security elements. Cost optimization and flexible configuration are additional areas for improvement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Sophos XG offers on-premise, hybrid, or private cloud solutions, providing deployment flexibility but with uneven technical support quality. Azure Firewall benefits from its predominant cloud-based design and Azure infrastructure integration, offering centralized management. However, Azure support quality varies, with some users reporting delays.

Pricing and ROI: Sophos XG is competitively priced for SMBs, offering flexible licensing and discounts, leading to good ROI by lowering third-party tool costs. Azure Firewall's pay-as-you-go model may result in increased costs as usage grows, though integration with Azure services could lower total ownership costs. Users may find its pricing less competitive compared to alternatives, impacting cost-effectiveness based on business needs and deployment scale.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Firewall vs. Sophos XG Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Firewall vs. Sophos XG

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.3%, up from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Firewall is 2.2%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos XG is 11.5%, up from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

EhabAli

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable

In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.

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Charan Kumar

Director, Technology at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Easy to use and configure but could be more robust

The cost of the solution has increased. The robustness of the software could be better. It should be able to cover host-to-host traffic or HTTP traffic. Configurations can be better. The workloads need to still have free access. The encryption and decryption process is not that seamless. It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls.

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SherifFouad

ICT Manager at a mining and metals company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Gives us customizable policies, modifiable templates, and customized rules for single users

The major problem that I am facing, and I know that others are facing as well, is with the HTTPS classic, in general, or any classic that works on Secure Socket Layers. Let's say I set up a rule to block users from accessing YouTube or Facebook. The rule will only block the HTTP traffic, which is non-secure traffic. But most websites right now, most of the reputable web services providers, for extra security for their own web servers and for the user's security, provide a connection over Secure Socket Layer. The problem comes when you are trying to block, or allow, similar traffic that uses HTTPS. You have to create a certificate and import it into the users' web browsers, whatever they are using. Now, this is not a problem when you're dealing with users stationed and fixed in a specific site or location. They are using desktops, they will never take the desktops and go home with them, nor will they ever take the desktops and travel to another country, or another site with it. The problem occurs when you're dealing with roaming users who use laptops and have to move between different sites that have different types of policies applied to them. You have to import all sorts of certificates from each site into their browser. Doing so will most probably conflict with something else that is totally irrelevant and cause a problem. A way around this is if you are using authentication with Active Directory. But most of the time, especially if you're operating in a remote site with a very slow internet connection, if it's available in the first place, authentication with Active Directory is impossible. So it needs an easier way to apply HTTPS filters, without importing certificates into users' browsers and without the need for using an Active Directory. There must be a way around it. There are workarounds. But with applied workarounds, it will work out once, it won't work out properly 10 other times. That is my only request. Also, since Sophos took over Cyberoam, the online technical library and support library have become super messy. To get a piece of information is becoming a nightmare. They need to reorganize the online technical support and technical library. The easiest way to overcome this is to look at how the Cyberoam online technical library was structured and to build the Sophos technical library the same way. It is messy, totally unorganized, time-wasting. Instead of getting what you want in five minutes it takes half an hour.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."

"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."

"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."

"This product is definitely scalable."

"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."

"Overall security features and performance routing is good."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."

"The solution is stable."

"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."

"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."

"The product's value to my company stems from its ability to secure my organization."

"Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive."

"The solution should be capable of self-scaling, which is one of the features we like about it."

"Great security and connectivity."

More Azure Firewall pros

"The most valuable feature is the central dashboard"

"I like the firewall, inbound, and outbound modules the most. The VPN feature also works well. It is very easy to configure rules in Sophos XG. We have got local service here in Zimbabwe from Sophos, which is something that I like a lot. We have got good local support, and they come on-site when we have any challenges. Sophos provides a lot of good training all around Zimbabwe. They are quite dominant here, similar to other solutions like Fortinet or WatchGuard."

"The VPN access for users is also a great thing, especially nowadays when working from home."

"The solution is a next generation firewall and we have gotten good customer feedback."

"Sophos began with a basic version and evolved into something more efficient in terms of performance."

"The solution seems pretty stable. We've had no issues so far."

"This is a very stable solution."

"It is very easy to configure and straightforward. The firewall rules are straightforward. It works great out of the box. It has been working as advertised, and I haven't had any issues with it."

More Sophos XG pros

Cons

"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."

"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."

"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."

"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."

"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."

"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."

"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."

"Technical support for this solution can be improved."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."

"For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall."

"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."

"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."

"The product pricing could be more competitive."

"There is room for further integration of AI into the system."

"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."

"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."

More Azure Firewall cons

"There are issues with electricity with this solution."

"One area where Sophos XG could improve is in its patch management system."

"The support engineers of the product are not very tech-savvy, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Sophos XG could improve the connectivity with Microsoft 365 or Azure Active Directory(AD). It doesn't work directly as other solutions do, such as Fortinet FortiGate. The client needs a separate AD server which is a problem."

"Sophos XG does not have the ability to disconnect a user."

"The interface could be simplified and diagnostic system graphs improved."

"The SD-WAN could be improved."

"When it comes to improvements that the vendor can make, we see that the cloud integration for managing all the firewalls is essentially a replacement of the on-prem version we had and is not sufficiently mature."

More Sophos XG cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective, and provides a good value for your money. The pricing, and license renewal, is very reasonable for us."

"Fortinet is reasonable in pricing and licensing. Overall, FortiGate is affordable. The licensing fee can be a little high, depending on the budget for your project."

"Pricing is good. They offer a lot of things, the most important is the support. Every time you upgrade your license, you also get insurance for the equipment. If you have any problem with equipment, they send in new equipment."

"I think that the pricing is fair."

"Easy to understand licensing requirements."

"In terms of the market, it's not a cheap product, but it's cost-effective."

"Other firewalls are more expensive than Fortinet FortiGate, such as the Azure firewall."

"The price, in comparison to other products is very cheap."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."

"The pricing of Azure Firewall is pay-as-you-go. Fortinet also has a pay-as-you-go model, but Azure's pricing is higher and, with FortiGate, you also have the license."

"The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."

"Azure Firewall is expensive."

"Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it. One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall."

"The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."

"It is expensive, especially with the premium functions. For one of the clients, it was very expensive. You have to use it more at an enterprise level, and there, it was not at an enterprise level. So, it was very costly, but security-wise, it was a very wise decision to use it that way."

"Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."

More Azure Firewall pricing and cost advice

"I don't think that it is expensive when you compare it with other solutions available on the market."

"We pay for two licenses for the use of Sophos XG annually and it is a flat fee. We do not have everyone going through both of the Sophos XG firewalls a the same time and the Sophos XG on Microsoft Azure is only accessible from the VPN."

"The product is expensive."

"I've had schools running different firewalls with subscriptions and different web filters with subscriptions, and I've found that it is less expensive for smaller schools to run the Sophos XG with its unified threat management instead of multiple appliances."

"Annual standard licensing fee."

"Sophos XG is not an expensive solution. If you are willing to pay more, then there is the Check Point firewall which is the best out of all the vendors."

"Sophos XG is a reasonably priced solution."

"When comparing with Palo Alto and Cisco, Sophos is cheaper."

More Sophos XG pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

22%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

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What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

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What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

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What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?

Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...

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How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?

Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the...

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Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?

Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...

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Which is better - Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls or Sophos XG?

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat si...

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What are the main differences in features between Sophos XG and FortiGate 80F?

Hi Arvind P , The Sophos XG firewall has a number of models right from XG86 to XG135w under the 1U Desktop Form Fact...

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What Is The Biggest Difference Between Sophos UTM and Sophos XG?

The Sophos UTM is a UTM and Sophos XG is the NGFW. First, you must know about the difference between a UTM and NGFW. ...

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Comparisons

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

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Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs Azure Firewall

Compared 20% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Azure Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Azure Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Azure Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

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Netgate pfSense vs Sophos XG

Compared 11% of the time

OPNsense vs Sophos XG

Compared 8% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Sophos XG

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Sophos XG

Compared 4% of the time

Meraki MX vs Sophos XG

Compared 3% of the time

More Sophos XG Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

January 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure Firewall

January 2025

Download Azure Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Sophos XG

December 2024

Download Sophos XG product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

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Fortinet

Microsoft

Sophos

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Azure Firewall is a user-friendly, intuitive, cloud-native firewall security solution that provides top-of-the-industry threat protection for all your Azure Virtual Network resources. Azure Firewall is constantly and thoroughly analyzing all traffic and data packets, making it a very valuable and secure fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall allows users to create virtual IP addresses and provides for secure DDoS protection for the virtual machines on your network. It also provides fast and efficient east-west and north-south traffic security.

Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service built to protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.

Azure Firewall has two significant offerings, Standard and Premium.

Azure Firewall Standard works directly with Microsoft Cyber Security and supplies excellent L3-L7 filtering and threat awareness. The proactive real-time threat awareness will quickly alert you and immediately deny all traffic to and from any known problematic or suspicious domains or IP addresses. Microsoft Cyber Security is updated continually to protect against all new and known potential threats at all times. To learn more about Azure Firewall Standard, click here.

Azure Firewall Premium provides everything the standard version does, and additionally adds extra levels of data encryption, network intrusion detection, extended URL filtering, and Web category filters. To learn more about the added features of Azure Firewall Premium, click here.

Key Benefits and Features of Azure Firewall:

High availability - You do not need load balancers with Azure Firewall; it's already built in and ready to go.
Self-scalability - Azure Firewall is intuitive and will auto-scale as needed based on traffic flow to be ready for peak traffic times.
Threat awareness - Using Microsoft Cyber Security to filter traffic, Azure Firewall will deny any known problematic threats to keep your network safe.
Additional IP addresses - You can securely add up to 250 public IP addresses with Azure Firewall
Improved web category filtering - You can set up specific protocols to allow or deny categories within websites that are deemed inappropriate for use within your network. You have the ability to organize categories based on a defined set of descriptions.

What our real users have to say:

Many PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to be very user-friendly and easy to use. They liked that it offers seamless integration to the cloud and were especially pleased with the threat filtering options.

Regarding integration and threat intelligence, our users wrote:

“The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.”

“The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats.”

“I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.”

Sophos XG is a versatile network security solution that offers network protection, firewall management, VPN access, web filtering, and intrusion prevention, providing comprehensive security for businesses from small offices to large enterprises.

Sophos XG stands out for its Synchronized Security, easy setup, and robust templates. It manages VPN access, protects against threats, and handles load balancing and traffic monitoring. The cloud-based management, centralized dashboard, and detailed logging make it user-friendly and reliable. Integration of features like email protection, SD-WAN, and unified threat management ensures a broad spectrum of security needs are covered. However, it could benefit from improvements in network security, user portals, technical support, and more scalable SD-WAN features.

What are the key features of Sophos XG?

Synchronized Security: Orchestrates threat intelligence sharing between endpoints and firewall.
Unlimited SSL VPN Clients: Provides extensive VPN client support for secure remote access.
Cloud-Based Management: Facilitates remote administration with a cloud-hosted platform.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and blocks potential threats in real-time.
Centralized Dashboard: Offers a comprehensive view of network security status.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing business needs.
User-Friendliness: Simplified setup and intuitive management.
Effective Threat Protection: Provides robust security against a wide range of threats.
Comprehensive Reporting: Delivers detailed insights and analytics.
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive in pricing with flexible deployment options.

Sophos XG is implemented across industries such as healthcare, education, and finance to secure sensitive data and ensure regulatory compliance. It aids in endpoint protection, application control, load balancing, and traffic monitoring essential for these industries. Enhancing network security, simplifying VPN setup, and integrating adaptive security features remain focal points for businesses.

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Azure Firewall vs. Sophos XG

January 2025

Free Report: Azure Firewall vs. Sophos XG

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Sophos XG and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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