We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Sophos UTM 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."The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"The product offers very good security."
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"The technology's very good. We have had a lot of good experience with this solution."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' IPS is more complete and is very good. This is a user-friendly solution that is easy to install, and it provides the best protection."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the robust firewall, which we can also use as a UTM device."
"In general, its performance and ease of use are the most valuable. Its performance is good, stable, and reliable. The user interface is friendly and easy to use. Customers find it easy to work with and easy to learn."
"We utilize advanced threat prevention features like web filtering and SSL decryption, which haven't caused any issues."
"I found Palo Alto NG firewalls more intuitive compared to other products. I value the capability to identify a cloud solution."
"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are application visibility and application awareness. Their strong point is identifying applications for traffic. So all of the policies that are configured are related to the application and not to a port."
"Identifying applications is very easy with this solution."
"It improved bandwidth utilization and provided link load balancing features for internet and intranet lease lines."
"The solution can scale."
"Sophos UTM has improved the porting section. It has improved security by seeing the gaps. For example, when you discover that an entry has been using a certain application, with Sophos UTM acting as a Layer 7 firewall, you can block the application, not the port."
"We've found the technical support to be helpful."
"The stability, overall, is excellent. I haven't had a problem in the last two years."
"The packet filtering's great. You get out what you put into it. It works great as long as you know your security and configure everything adequately. If you just pop one in and it's not configured, then it's basically wide open. It kind of depends on the admin skill, but it's an excellent product."
"The features that I've known to be most valuable are both the web security features as well as the web firewall capabilities. As a partner of Sophos firewall, we have some clients and they are using Sophos firewall UTM and we are using it as well."
"It has helped by identifying threats within the company. If there are computers or servers that are compromised, then we are able to identify them right away in the system."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"There are some advanced features that we aren't able to use, which include active IP authentication and app ID. We are facing challenges with implementing those two features."
"The tech support was once great, but now it is poor. The tech support has gone south. It is really difficult. I had a Priority 1 case last a week in their queue, and after multiple complaints, I finally got somebody to take the case. These are things that are unacceptable in the business world. They could train their employees better."
"Support should be improved, wait times can be long."
"There has been a recent change in the graphical interface. For the monitoring part, they could have a better UI."
"People sometimes find it more expensive as compared to other solutions. There are also fewer training opportunities for Palo Alto than Cisco and other vendors."
"The VPN has room for improvement."
"Palo Alto keeps coming out with antivirus and malware updates. When we have to integrate those updates we face some problems with the cloud platform, not the on-prem setup. The device works fine, but sometimes the sync doesn't happen on time."
"The advanced manual protection needs to be improved a little bit because they used to make a cloud manual analysis for the cloud."
"The solution could be improved by adding cloud soundboxing."
"The only time we face a problem or issues is when we place a ticket. We have found that response is very slow."
"We need to speed up the support."
"The classification segregation of applications lacks sufficient definition."
"Doesn't provide antivirus for individual computers."
"In Sophos UTM there is always a problem with the routing tables. If you want to see the routing table, you have to use the UI. You can't do it via a web browser. The routing table is better in Fortinet."
"In short, the UI and UX are the areas of improvement in Sophos UTM and similar solutions compared to Palo Alto."
"I would like to see Sophos UTM add support for all the new threat-detection technologies and the ability to respond to novel security threats that come along every day."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. Sophos UTM report.
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