Sophos SafeGuard Reviews

I have deployed a couple of Sophos firewalls for our clients recently. We are customers of Sophos. 

The solution has the intelligence to block a virus attack and prevent it from moving across the system. It's easy to use and a very reliable firewall, functionally and mechanically.

The solution lacks connectivity to Azure AD so it can connect to the regular internal Windows AD server but there's no direct connection to Azure AD. That would be a product improvement that needs to be implemented given that almost everyone is now on the cloud.  

I've been using this solution for nine years. 

From what I have seen, this is a very scalable product. It's a major plus point for them.

I've had a very good experience with customer service, particularly recently as I've also been managing other Sophos firewalls for customers.

Positive

It's worth taking the time to figure out how the solution can fit your needs. Sophos satisfies a large number of requirements and gives you unified security. It's something that has become a standard function with all other solutions in the market including with Palo Alto, SonicWall. I think Sophos leads in that space and if you're looking at a unified security function, then I recommend Sophos because of the protection from the endpoint to the gateway. It's a strong and capable system. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We use the solution primarily for email scanning.

The malware protection and the scanning features are most valuable in this solution.

There are times that this solution takes up too much memory that needs to be resolved. If it is not fixed it will definitely create issues in the future.

In an upcoming release, there should be more reports on the health status of the systems that we could fix, such as memory health, CPU utilization, and CPU health. These types of additions would be a great help.

I have been using the solution for approximately six months.

I have found the solution to be stable.

The solution has been scalable. Most of my clients are enterprise-size organizations using this solution.

Since I have been using the solution I have not had any errors or any issues I would need to contact support about.

I have used Trend Micro and Symantec antivirus previously. We have had a lot of issues with Trend Micro antivirus. We were facing so many issues related to the support and integration with some applications. There were times when applications would stop running. The solution also took up too many resources that were impacting the system's performance which is why we needed to move on from that particular antivirus.

It would be great if the price of the solution was lower than the current price. If we are to sell this particular solution to smaller businesses and not just enterprise businesses, it needs to be lower.

I rate Sophos SafeGuard a seven out of ten.

The most valuable features of the solution are the fact that they are able to encrypt the hard disk and to encrypt USB sticks. 

The solution is not using other features like booting encryption, because it causes very heavy processing of the workstation. If they could find some way to handle the encryption and decryption to be lighter on the workstation it would be better.

It would be ideal if the solution could make the processing possible on an appliance, instead of having to install it on a machine. Also, it should be in the network layers and communicate with more workstations. The encryption and decryption processing should not be on the workstation; rather it should be on the appliance.

The solution is very stable.

It's very, very easy to scale the solution. You do not need to make any upgrades. You just need to adjust the sizing to expand. You can expand at any time.

Technical support is very good, but sometimes they take a while to respond. This solution's very complex and still in the development process. Sometimes customers will ask for items that need to be developed or are not easy to develop. The solution is putting out a lot of updates, however, so they're constantly working to create a better product.

The initial setup was straight forward. The settings are not complex. However, sometimes some encryption settings have a complex configuration.

We are a distributor of the solution. We recommend users use professional services to assist us with the implementation.

I would recommend the solution.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

There's not a good market for this type of solution here in Egypt. It might be because here in Egypt there isn't a great need for this kind of solution yet. There are no compliance regulations from the government. However, the solution offers good features and I believe would be good for customers. There are so many areas where customers need encryption technology. 

We use this solution to protect our devices in a data center environment.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the protection. It offers many different areas of protection such as trade and virus protection.

It's the best solution on the market.

It's a good product, but some are not happy with the boot BCN, and the point-to-point VPN requires the best protection. Better internet protection is required.

We are currently using Sophos XG 210.21 but it expires in August, so we are looking at the Next-Generation Firewall.

We are using the latest version of SafeGuard.

It's a stable solution. We have no issues with stability.

We can expand the product when we have the requirements to do so. For now, we have not explored this area.

We have 150 users in various roles using this solution in our organization.

The technical support is great. They are very good, and helpful.

The initial setup was complex.

It took two months to deploy.

Initially, we started to implement this solution but required some help from support.

Licensing is on a yearly basis and the pricing could be better.

I would recommend this solution to others because it's a very good product.

We are satisfied with SafeGuard and I would rate it a ten out of ten.

The customer needs a complete end-to-end solution to protect and synchronize their data.

The most valuable feature is the synchronized security. It's a unique feature on the market at this time only offered by Sophos. As a reseller, we often win bids and get clients because of this unique trademark feature.

It's a complete end-to-end solution, which is a huge advantage. 

It's easy to explain to customers.

We don't have to go from one product to another to address the needs of our customers. Everything you need is in the solution, and the license is embedded in the firewall.

When you compare Sophos SafeGuard to Palo Alto and other enterprise firewalls solutions, Sophos doesn't have the same market. 

Palo Alto targets the SMB market and Sophos would like to approach the enterprise market, but it can be difficult to approach these customers without having the right offering.

Sophos has a rich roadmap to cover this area, but we are not aware of it, so it difficult for us to approach these customers without having the right offering.

In the next release, I would like to see more automation with the endpoint logging, but it's a special feature that is quite complicated to explain. There is a trick to implementing it. You have to implement some scripting into it.

I have been reselling Sophos SafeGuard for three years.

This solution is quite stable, but that was not the case two years ago. There was an issue with the UTM Firewall to the XG Firewall. However, with this latest version, there haven't been any issues.

This solution is scalable.

The project system throughout the entre firewall is the same. This means that we don't have different versions from the smaller to the larger models, making the scalability quite simple.

Our clients have less than five hundred users.

I have not contacted technical support. The service provider that we use filters the issues our customers have.

Approximately five years ago, I was using another solution but it was very different, and everything has changed. We are only dealing with Sophos software solutions. I can't compare it to a solution that I used five years ago. 

The initial setup is quite simple and straightforward.

The length of deployment depends on the environment of the customer and the number of endpoints. On average, it can take four to five days.

Normally, one person is more than enough to deploy this solution, but that person must have network and security experience.

We have a small team in our company to implement this solution for our clients and on occasion, we leverage two other deployment partners.

The maintenance is provided by another service provider that we use, who specializes in this area. They monitor and upgrade this product. Along with the maintenance, they offer a service desk to support the security and the operating system.

The licenses are renewed every three years.

The licenses are dependant on the number of users and computers you have to protect.

This is a complete product that is offering full-feature bundles. 

On occasion, if a customer is looking for better performance with their email protection, I offer a separate appliance for email protection. These features can be extracted from the firewall and used as a separate dedicated appliance to address the issues surrounding email protection. This is for on-premises versions only and is available to everyone. This is an extra feature which would be an additional cost.

It's a good solution for the SMB market but not enterprise.

Sophos is the leading brand for information security. 

Sophos is a complete solution that has a range of firewalls and all of the software bundles from the endpoint to the data center.

Along with our service providers and our team, who have a good understanding of the product, we use Sophos technicians to do the webcast for our customers. This occurs as part of the process, but typically not during the implementation phase.

Most of the time the customer doesn't require special features to be added. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

All the features and equipment of Sophos help improve our organization’s security.

The product filters phishing emails. It blocks suspicious files downloaded on devices to avoid damage. We use data encryption. If our laptop is stolen, we can avoid losing data. The product is very safe. The interface used for deploying encryption policies is user-friendly. I’m satisfied with the tool’s performance.

The product is not cheap.

I have been using the solution for six to seven months.

We haven’t faced any bugs or glitches.

We have about 100 users in our organization.

It is easy to deploy and maintain the product. We have four people to maintain the tool. It is easy to configure it.

Data security is the most important thing. It is difficult to calculate the ROI. However, it is understandable that solutions like Sophos SafeGuard make us more safe.

It is a premium product, so the quality is good.

We are technicians. We configure the laptops. I have used different security systems in my previous organization. We are adding new features like access points for Wi-Fi. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

It is being used as a firewall.

The solution can be easily connected and it is very secure. 

Sophos should conduct some seminars to teach people how to use it and also to inform the users about what they should do in case of problems.

I have been using Sophos SafeGuard for three years.

I rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

It is a scalable solution. 150 people are using the solution across three locations. Another fifty users will be increased in the next one or two years.

The initial setup is straightforward and the deployment takes very little time. One or two staff members are required for regular monitoring and checking of the configurations. 

The solution was deployed in-house. 

The pricing is good and now they offer three-year and five-year plans. After that, if one likes the service, they can choose the lifetime service. 

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. 

We have several use cases for SafeGuard, primarily for its security features. We also use it for the VPN and plan filtering. We are customers of Sophos and I'm head of information technology product support.

Sophos SafeGuard offers one of the best VPNs I've seen. The solution is very good in terms of securities because all information is protected and encrypted with very good anti-viral applications. It's wonderful.

The dashboards currently lack sufficient information. For example, when we want to look for accessibilities we have to go in-depth and then run the scripts and only then access what we're looking for. It could all be available in the reports and save a lot of time. I want to be able to know who is using what, to check visibilities.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The stability is good. 

Scalability depends on the parameters. The solution is scalable it's just a question as to what level. It will be different for every situation. 

We are happy with the technical support team because they are accessible locally.

The initial setup is straightforward. We had some assistance initially but after we received guidelines from the technical team, it was easy. Anyone can do it with a couple of hours of training.

Licensing is reasonably priced, particularly when you compare it to a solution like Semantic which is more expensive. Sophos is an affordable product.

SafeGuard is good for medium to large size organizations. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10.