We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sophos XGS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"The solution can scale well."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"We've found the solution to be pretty stable."
"I think that the firewall feature is the most valuable to me as it is one of the oldest features for this solution. We also appreciate how stable the VPN is."
"The content filtering is good."
"I am used to the ASA syntax, therefore it is quite easy to make up new rules. I have found that DNS doctoring rules are useful."
"I have access to the web version of Cisco Talos to see the reputation of IP addresses. I find this very helpful. It provides important information for my company to obtain the reputation of IP addresses. The information in Talos is quite complete."
"The Inline Mode configuration works really well, and ASA works very impressively."
"Unfortunately in Cisco, only the hardware was good."
"It helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications."
"Malicious URLs are being blocked."
"The Sophos XGS product is highly versatile and well-suited for various companies, including small, medium, and large enterprises. Its effectiveness lies in its inspection firewall capabilities, making it a commonly chosen option in our country due to its reasonable pricing. Sophos Firewall's support for VPN encryption and thorough inspection makes it a suitable choice for many companies, and I recommend it accordingly. At the moment, I can't propose any new features. The primary concern is the traffic stability, which needs improvement. Although the traffic stability is generally good, it has been noted that it can impact RAM and CPU, affecting workflow and inspection."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The solution is scalable."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos is the VPN solution. I also value their threat management, IPS IDS features and login features with single sign-on."
"The solution is easy to use and configure, once you know how to apply the policies."
"In this solution, the most valuable feature is that it's a security device. Maintaining security is very valuable for us. The other feature that we did not find in other products is that it works well with thin client environments."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XGS for me are XGS IPS, SD-WAN, VPN setup, email protection, and integration with endpoint security."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"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."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"The dashboard can be improved."
"It should have packets, deep level inspections and controls, like the features which other IPS solutions used to have."
"I wish the Cisco interface was not so granular. Check Point was easier to create specific rules than with ASAv."
"I would like it to be easier to work with and have a better user interface. It is not straightforward. You need to know the Cisco command-line interface."
"We would like to see improvement in recovery. If there is an issue that forces us to do recovery, we have to restart or reboot. In addition, sometimes we have downtime during the maintenance windows. If Cisco could enhance this, so that upgrades would not necessarily require downtime, that would be helpful."
"I was just trying to learn how this product actually operates and one thing that I see from internal processing is it does fire-walling and then sends it to the IPS model and any other model that needs to be performed. For example, content checking or filtering will be done in a field processing manner. That is something that causes delays in the network, from a security perspective. That is something that can be improved upon. Palo Alto already has implemented this as a pilot passed processing. So they put the same stream of data across multiple modules at the same time and see if it is giving a positive result by using an XR function. So, something similar can be done in the Cisco Firepower. Instead of single processing or in a sequential manner, they can do something similar to pile processing. Internal function that is something that they can improve upon."
"I would like more features in conjunction with other solutions, like Fortinet."
"Cisco should work on ASDM. One of the biggest drawbacks of Cisco ASA is ASDM GUI. Cisco should improve the ASDM GUI. The configuration through ASDM is really difficult as compared to CLI. Sometimes when you are doing the configuration in ASDM, it suddenly crashes. It also crashes while pushing a policy. Cisco should really work on this."
"They need intelligent reporting, not just your simple, standard reports."
"It has recently started to suddenly block and crash."
"Its pricing could be better."
"They should customers who are facing issues with their product reviews; they found bots in it. If they can do their proper research and use the user analysis and testing, that would greatly help the clients."
"I recommend Sophos increase the user capacity of the firewall by 1.5 times. For example, say the firewall can accommodate 1,000 users now, then it should handle a load of 1,500 users."
"The SD-WAN feature isn't very good. It's there, but it doesn't work properly."
"Sophos XGS needs improvement with the threshold values. Other solutions have the capacity to handle more users."
"Sophos XGS could improve the price."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Sophos XGS is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 62 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Sophos XGS is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XGS writes "Easy to use, simple to learn, and offers great reporting". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense, WatchGuard Firebox and SonicWall NSa. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos XGS report.
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