Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Sophos XG comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
318
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Cisco Secure Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
409
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (3rd)
Sophos XG
Ranking in Firewalls
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
198
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.7%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Firewall is 5.6%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos XG is 11.2%, up from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Q&A Highlights

Steve Chiyenda - PeerSpot reviewer
May 20, 2022
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Jordan De Sousa - PeerSpot reviewer
Helped with the consolidation of tools and has a great dashboard
We have used different types of solutions. We had Cisco ASA for about 10 years, and then we switched to an on-site firewall to MX from Meraki, Cisco. For our cloud, we have Cisco Services Routers. The migration to the cloud has been a lot of work. Not all of our systems were compliant with being on the cloud so we had to work on some applications and delete some of them. For the old systems, we had to do extra work but for the newer systems, it was fine. The migration took around 18 months to migrate 99%. We had more than 2,000 on-prem firewall sites. Cisco helped with the migration to the cloud with the migration tool. Migrating MX was really easy and the tools helped us to migrate from the old ASA we had to the new MX. The cloud, firewalling, and CSR helped us from the data center on-premise approach to the cloud because at the time we didn't have a lot of experience with the cloud. It was easy to use the Cisco appliances in that space. I think that this solution has saved our IT staff time because of the ease of deployment. When I first started as a network engineer, it took a whole day to configure a firewall because of all the particularities you could potentially have at a site. I think that this solution saved our organization's time because security saves money because. At the end of the day, firewalls block threats. This solution helped with the consolidation of tools as we had all the observability tools in the solutions. Some 10 years ago we all had third-party solutions doing the observability. Now, we have the whole package and not only the firewall. We choose Cisco 10 or 20 years ago mostly because it was a market-leading solution. I also think it's because of MX's user-friendly solution that you can get on board easily. As far as CSA goes, I believe it's because you have a lot of features on the firewalls and it's the stability of course.
SherifFouad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"It has a good UI and overall integration, including FortiGate Manager for controlling all firewalls from a single place."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"The most valuable feature that Cisco Firepower NGFW provides for us is the Intrusion policy."
"Clustering architecture which offers zero downtime upgrades, keeping uptime close to 99.999%."
"I like the IPS feature, it is the most valuable."
"It has definitely improved our organization. It gives us remote connectivity, helps workers connect remotely, and also gives us good connectivity to our other branches."
"The VPN feature is the most valuable to us because it accomplishes the task well. We're able to do everything we need to do."
"It brings us the ability to work from anywhere and has allowed us to work remotely without having to incur a lot of other costs. If we didn't have this type of solution, since we have so many on-prem services that are required, we would have likely lost money and been unable to deliver. We have a video services team who helped build the content for our sporting events. When you are watching a Leaf game and those swipes come by as well as the clips and things, those are all generated in-house. Without the ability to access our on-premise resources, we would have been dead in the water. So, the return on that is pretty impressive."
"The IPS (In-plane switching) is the most valuable feature."
"Once you add Firepower onto to it and you start enabling some of its features, you get some IDS/IPS involved with it and you can even do web filtering."
"The initial setup is pretty simple."
"The solution is more cost-effective than FortiGate, Cisco and Palo Alto, which have very expensive licenses."
"The SL VPNs are the most valuable feature. I have a lot of systems out of the head office that need to connect to the local networks, and they all connect wirelessly via the Sophos VPN client."
"Price-wise the solution offers acceptable rates. You can find cheaper solutions on the market but when you go cheaper you have fewer features. Today, based on iQuate market the price is very reasonable and affordable, and it's good if you get a good discount. Discounts can be offered by the vendor. If it's a competitive upgrade which means the customer is upgrading from another vendor, Sophos provides extra discount so they can win the deal. In general, it is a good price."
"It is a very stable solution."
"It has a very friendly interface like the Cyberoam iNG units, it has customizable policies, it has proper templates that you can even modify, and you can customize the rules, down to each single user."
"Content filtering and intrusion prevention are most valuable. Our customers are fully satisfied with the performance of Sophos. It has all the features that they require in a firewall."
"The firewall provides network visibility and reporting capabilities, constantly improving over time. It can be integrated with the cloud console, allowing centralized management of multiple firewalls. integration with endpoint security products ensures seamless traffic flow and rule enforcement, even when endpoints are not directly connected to the firewall."
 

Cons

"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"For the new line of FTDs, the performance could be improved. We sometimes have issues with the 41 series, depending what we activate. If we activate too many intrusion policies, it affects the CPU."
"Cisco should improve its user interface design. There is a deep learning curve to the product if you are a newcomer."
"It's mainly the UI and the management parts that need improvement. The most impactful feature when you're using it is the user interface and the user experience."
"We are Cisco partners, and when we recommend Cisco FirePower to customers, they always think that FirePower is bad. For a single installation of FirePower, if I have to write about 18 tickets to Cisco, it's a big problem. There was an issue was related to Azure. We had Active Directory in Azure. The clients had to connect to FirePower through Azure. We had a lot of group policies. After two group policies, we had to make groups in Azure, and they had to sign in and sign back. It was a triple-layer authentication, and there was a big problem, so we didn't use it."
"An area of improvement for this solution is the console visualization."
"If Cisco could stop rebranding, combine all the CLIs/GUIs, and give a consistent experience, this would be great."
"Cisco is not cheap, however, it is worth investing in these technologies."
"Recently, we have been having an issue with the ASA firewall. We haven't found the root cause yet and are still working on it. We failed over the firewall from active to passive and suddenly that resolved the issue. We are now working to find the root cause."
"The UI needs improvement because it can be a little weird at times."
"Over the last six months, we have noticed that the hardware is slow, especially the VPN connections."
"It is performing well. However, the only challenges that we are facing are the effectiveness with blocking the proxy and tuneling applications, aside from proxy and similar applications. So the application filter on the product is not really performing 100%. Every now and then there are some updates that are happening on such applications, and it takes time until it gets the appropriate updates and becomes capable of capturing such applications and blocking them. A new feature I would really like to see would be some sort of an enhanced application filter with greater efficiency when it comes to the applications that can bypass firewall policies. These applications are really a nightmare. Once they are on the network and not detected, or the appliance is not really successful in capturing them and unblocking them, the bandwidth gets wasted all the time."
"The user interface could be improved and more bandwidth management would be helpful."
"The VPN is in need of improvement."
"I would like the update process to be easier, to update the firmware of the boxes. I think it's much better automatically than having to do it manually: Download the file, do network discovery. I they can make the update process much more automatic that would help."
"They need to allow their solution to integrate with other products and not just other Sophos solutions."
"I'd like the dashboard to be improved. It could be a bit more customizable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to Palo Alto, which we have used in the past, pricing and licensing are okay."
"The price for the device and software is high. However, the solution is of good quality and has a lot of features."
"Its price is affordable and lesser than Cisco. Cisco is expensive. In terms of licensing, there is only one issue. If a customer's license has expired a month ago and they do the renewal after one month, Fortinet renews the license from the start of the previous month. The activation of the product is done from the previous month, not from the date of renewal. The customers usually shout and complain that because they are paying today, the renewal should start from today. The support contract renewals or licensing should be renewed from the date of renewal, but Fortinet starts from the day it had expired. It is a loss for customers. They might have had some problems because of which they did not take the license one month before. Fortinet should work on this. Cisco doesn't do this. Cisco always starts from the day they apply for the license."
"The value is the capability of having multiple services with one unique license, not having the limitation per user licensing schema, like other vendors."
"The beauty is the price performance ratio is great with FortiGate. It provides all the features we needed and the price is comparable with others' firewalls. The price is quite competitive with the firewalls with similar features."
"Compared to other firewall products, it's a little cheaper in terms of pricing."
"These boxes are not that expensive compared to what they can do, their functionality, and the reporting you receive. Fortinet licensing is straightforward and less confusing compared to Cisco."
"The license for Fortinet FortiGate is affordable in my country."
"Pricing is the same as other competitors. It is comparable. The licensing has gotten better. It has been easier with Smart Licensing."
"The product is expensive."
"Acquiring licensing for Cisco Secure Firewall can be a bit cumbersome, therefore a more straightforward licensing process would be preferable."
"When we purchased the firewall, we had to take the security license for IPS, malware protection, and VPN. If we are using high availability, we have to take a license for that. We also have to pay for hardware support and technical support. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The price is not too high, but the subscription is a little bit high. We compared the activation of Cisco and Fortinet, and when we activated the whole portfolio of the UTM of Fortinet, the speed reduced. We tested the same situation with the Cisco 2140 series, and there was no reduction in speed."
"This product is expensive."
"Cisco's pricing is high, at times, for what they provide."
"The pricing of Cisco firewalls, in the security market, is fair."
"It's a suitable price and license."
"It is not very expensive."
"It comes at a fair price as compared to some of the other products out there. Its price is in the middle. It is not the cheapest, and it is also not as expensive as Juniper, Check Point, and definitely Cisco. Nowadays, everybody is very cost-sensitive, and people don't want to spend unnecessary money, but even before that, it was a fairly priced product. You've got your choice of what license you want. There are basically two types of licenses, and it depends on what you need to do, and everything is included in that license. There is no cost for VPN and DMZ. You purchase the license, and you know upfront what you're getting or what you're not getting, and that's it. It is one license fee and done and dusted."
"We prepaid in advance to get the max discount."
"The pricing is economical."
"Currently, we have a contract for three years. It would be good if its price is reduced before we renew the contract. We will buy the equipment if it is cheaper."
"We generally buy it for a three-year license."
"I don't think that it is expensive when you compare it with other solutions available on the market."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 11, 2015
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto Networks
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto: Management Goodies You often have comparisons of both firewalls concerning security components. Of course, a firewall must block attacks, scan for viruses, build VPNs, etc. However, in this post I am discussing the advantages and disadvantages from both vendors concerning…
 

Answers from the Community

Steve Chiyenda - PeerSpot reviewer
May 20, 2022
May 20, 2022
My preference is the Sophos XGS, particularly when you team it up with the Sophos Endpoint Protection client and configure it for synchronized security. Both can be managed through Sophos Central and are available at a decent price for the power they offer the SMB.
2 out of 3 answers
Bennett Gomonda - PeerSpot reviewer
May 18, 2022
I prefer Sophos. I find it easy to use and it has better features on malware and threat management.
Carlos Roberto Da Silva - PeerSpot reviewer
May 19, 2022
I recommend Sophos XGS firewall. It will offer the best solution for malware protection.  Also, I recomend Sophos CIXA with XDR (Sophos Endpoint), so you can use Syncronized Security.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
40%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

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...
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...
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 ...
Which is better - Fortinet FortiGate or Cisco ASA Firewall?
One of our favorite things about Fortinet Fortigate is that you can deploy on the cloud or on premises. Fortinet Fort...
How does Cisco's ASA firewall compare with the Firepower NGFW?
It is easy to integrate Cisco ASA with other Cisco products and also other NAC solutions. When you understand the Cis...
Which is better - Meraki MX or Cisco ASA Firewall?
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the operating software for the Cisco ASA suite. It supports netw...
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...
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...
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. ...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Firewall, Cisco ASA NGFW, Adaptive Security Appliance, Cisco Sourcefire Firewalls, Cisco ASAv, Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
There are more than one million Adaptive Security Appliances deployed globally. Top customers include First American Financial Corp., Genzyme, Frankfurt Airport, Hansgrohe SE, Rio Olympics, The French Laundry, Rackspace, and City of Tomorrow.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos XG and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.