We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls 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."It's very fast and easy to configure."
"Their interface is very easy to use, it is without bugs."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"With FortiClient, you can easily connect when you are home, check out what you want to do, and connect to your network when you are not at work. You can switch on servers and you can check what is wrong."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"The most valuable features are the power of the threat prevention and the WildFire service. Its strength comes from the huge number of sensors all over the world. The firewalls have a rich library of signatures."
"We standardized on the product and got rid of several other types of firewalls from different vendors."
"A feature introduced by Palo Alto with the version 10-OS is embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. Machine learning analyzes the network traffic and detects if there is any usual traffic coming from outside to inside. Because of Palo Alto, organizations detect around 91% of malicious attacks using machine learning. The machine learning helps customers by implementing firewalls in critical and air gap areas so there is no need to integrate with the cloud sandbox."
"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."
"The first time I came across these firewalls, what surprised me the most was their web user interface. It is complete and gives you a lot of information. You can do 80% of the things related to your network and firewall through the web UI. In some of the other devices, the UI is not as complete. App-ID is also very valuable in customer networks. When you're seeing a lot of traffic in your network, you can see in your web UI which users have the applications that are consuming the most bandwidth. You have a broad context, which is very good."
"Overall, it is a good solution. It is stable. We use URL filtering, which is useful for blocking undesired URLs."
"Identifying applications is very easy with this solution."
"It is pretty important to have embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention, because all these different attacks and threats are constantly evolving. So, you want to have something beyond just hard pass rules. You want it to learn as it is going along. Its machine learning seems pretty good. It seems like it is catching quite a few things."
"Spam filtering is what I love most about XGS."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XGS for me are XGS IPS, SD-WAN, VPN setup, email protection, and integration with endpoint security."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XGS are a set of functionalities that are quite commendable, they call it synchronized security, where all the solutions share defense lines with each other."
"One of the main advantages of Sophos XGS is the processor. You don't have to wait a long time for when you are managing the firewall and the traffic is faster now."
"All the features are valuable, in my opinion, but for us the most important features are the network security, application control, and web server protection. Sophos Sandstorm is another good feature off the top of my head."
"It is very stable. I have not heard of any issue where clients would have to replace hardware. It's been really stable for a long while."
"The centralized security is very good."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"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."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"Customers don't want to buy extra things for extra capabilities"
"In the future, I would like to see more OTP features."
"Lacks mobility between on-prem and cloud based."
"There has been a recent change in the graphical interface. For the monitoring part, they could have a better UI."
"The first level of support will usually do nothing for you. If you're an IT company, you're not looking for level one support. You need to escalate. Other vendors have a direct support line for enterprise clients, but not Palo Alto."
"The whole performance takes a long time. It takes a long time to configure."
"The support could be improved. Palo Alto does not have a support team located in Bangladesh, and their support team operates from another location. Therefore, when we raise a ticket, it takes some time for them to respond, which can be problematic for us."
"The pricing of the solution is quite high. It's one of the most expensive firewall solutions on the market."
"Compared to Fortinet, the cost is high."
"It has recently started to suddenly block and crash."
"Its pricing could be better."
"We'd like an interface that can monitor everything."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"In my view, Sophos operates effectively in a reactive mode, focusing on static detection and forwarding traffic. However, Fortinet takes a more proactive approach, blocking both connection and route connections. While Sophos forwards any connection in both inbound and outbound traffic, I believe this is a positive aspect, especially in a country with various sizing considerations. This is my perspective, emphasizing the significance of Sophos XGS in software work."
"There are some bugs relating to the product that allow VPN users to bypass the firewall."
"I would like to see a history of the monthly bandwidth utilization, the bandwidth consumption for a period of time."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 164 reviews while Sophos XGS is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 62 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while Sophos XGS is rated 7.8. 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 XGS writes "Easy to use, simple to learn, and offers great reporting". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Sangfor NGAF, whereas Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense, WatchGuard Firebox and Meraki MX. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. Sophos XGS report.
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