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. 

I use SafeGuard to protect the end-user's system from any external algorithms. Users have to be ready for any attack, whether it's coming from within or outside the network.

You have to pay extra for some additional features, like data extraction. It would be nice if everything was available in one bundle.

I have been using Sophos SafeGuard for four years.

SafeGuard is extremely stable.

SafeGuard is highly scalable.

I rate Sophos support seven out of 10. Sometimes, it takes them time to respond.

Neutral

Setting up SafeGuard is straightforward except the bandwidth and sync. It takes around five minutes to deploy one module, depending on your network environment. Sometimes, a client needs a strictly on-premises deployment instead of on the cloud. 

I performed the installation by myself. 

I rate Sophos SafeGuard 10 out of 10. It's easy to use. You have to pay extra for additional, but the basic product is fantastic. It will be a good solution for you, depending on your requirements.

Our primary use case of this solution is for security and VPN connection.

The uses can vary per customer. For example, one customer wanted to protect their network, with VPN connectivity. Sophos has good features that customers know and like. It is also less expensive than other firewalls. Other customers, for example, wanted to publish their websites and their servers. They wanted to protect their servers and publish them on the internet. Another customer needs to have security because they were attacked by ransomware. 

The Intercept X feature is the most valuable feature. You can't find this feature in other firewalls because Intercept X works as if it has an interaction between the endpoint and the firewall. It makes a connection between the endpoint protection and the firewall. If Intercept X finds some behavior that's not right, it separates it and it secures the network to defend it from this attack. This is a good feature and development that Sophos implemented around five years ago.

Sophos SafeGuard is a German product. Sophos isn't really active in Europe. The Middle East, Africa, South Africa works with Sophos but their primary users aren't in Europe. They should market and push this solution to the European market. 

This product is stable but we have had some complaints from other customers. There is a loop on the internet. Once we deploy Sophos in our topology or in our infrastructure, the behavior or their action creates a loop on the internet. Otherwise, it's easy to install and offers good security.

It is very scalable. If you compare the price of Sophos to Fortinet or Cisco, it's as expensive. 

I would rate their technical support eight out of ten. There's a bit of a delay in their response time to tickets. 

The setup is very easy because you just need to make the arrangements for your interfaces and your network port. After that, you can make your policy and can publish the servers. You might need more technical support for the security and for the firewall. If you come from an advanced organization, it might be more difficult and not as easy at first.

The amount of time it will take will vary per customer. If they ask for network protection features it will take, for example, a maximum of one hour. But if your customer has a topology in his network and he needs to make certain policies and synchronization with Active Directory, that will take time. The deployment can take a few days. It depends on the customer. 

The licensing costs depend on the series. For example, XG 85 can be around $200. If you go to ACC or to a four or five-year enterprise solution, you will find these devices can cost $10,000. It depends on the series. 

Working with this solution will depend on your budget. If you purchase Sophos your data and your network will be secured. It's not more expensive than similar products. I recommend going with Sophos. 

I would rate Sophos a 7.5 out of ten because there are better firewalls out there. 

We use this solution for encrypting our laptops.

This is an anti-theft solution because I can even encrypt the boot sector, which means that the user has to enter a password to unlock the operating system. If the laptop is stolen then everything is encrypted.

This solution helps us to improve security, especially for sensitive data. It helps to prevent the leakage of data from the laptops.

This solution allows us to easily manage devices from Sophos Central cloud.

Policy deployment is easy and quick to do.

This solution integrates well with the antivirus solution.

I would like to have more control over the files in the Sophos encryption system.

This solution needs to have more data loss prevention techniques. Having a DLP integrated with the encryption engine would be very good.

This is a stable solution. We have had no issues with it.

This solution is used on a daily basis.

The cloud version is easy to scale. I just add a new license with the number of users. It is already deployed, and there is no more configuration.

We have about ten technical people, including admins, and about seventy-five end-users. As the company grows, so will our use of this solution.

The Sophos technical support is very helpful. We can open a chat or email them. They have a knowledge base for all cases of deployment.

Sometimes we have issues that take a long time to solve. They have a lot of teams, so once in a while, we open the case with one person but somebody else completes the ticket. This does not happen for the majority of the time.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

The initial setup of this solution depends on the deployment model.

The cloud version is very straightforward to set up. Just select the package you want and send it to the client.

The on-premises version is very complicated. You have to first create the policy, then apply it and integrate your Active Directory, then install it on the machines. It's a very complicated process.

For the on-premises version, it takes about fifteen minutes to deploy after the initial setup and configuration. The initial configuration takes perhaps two days. It involves setting the policies for each of the users. 

Our in-house team performed the implementation. There were five people involved.

Licensing for this solution is on a yearly basis. They tell you from day one how much it costs and what features you get. One of the great things about Sophos is if we have any added features that they send out, it will be included in the pricing. The price will not increase.

We evaluated other encryption solutions and we found that this was the easiest one to use, especially with cloud management.

Another reason that we chose this solution is that it is a standalone package. Kaspersky have an encryption solution, but it is part of a bundle with their endpoint solution. The advantage to standalone is that you can use it even if you don't have any Sophos endpoints. 

We are using the cloud version of this solution because the on-premises version does not have anti-ransomware or machine learning capability.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to also use the cloud version, rather than the on-premises edition. This is especially true if they have teleworkers or mobile users that are often off-premises.

The security of our data is important. One of our teams has a person who lost their laptop, and the team was not using this solution so it was not encrypted. We consider that to be data leakage.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a solution integrator, and this is one of the products that we supply to our clients.

The primary use of this solution is to protect data, and we have clients such as hotels who use it.

When our clients know that they have the ability to monitor their network security, they are satisfied.

The most valuable feature is the cloud-based supervision that is offered by Sophos Central.

The performance of this solution is good.

The monitoring features are easy to use.

I would like to see a support-cloud, where Sophos creates a single package that contains all of its products.

This solution is very stable. To this point, we have had no problem with any of our clients.

This is a scalable solution.

One of our clients is a hotel and they have thirteen users.

Technical support for this solution is good, but we rarely contact them because we rarely see problems.

This solution is very easy to configure and deploy.

I perform the deployment myself.

Sophos has another cloud platform that supports firewall management, and it is very easy to deploy.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Sophos SafeGuard is a firewall; we use it for filtering and internet security.

Sophos SafeGuard constantly updates, so I am always using the latest version.

Within our organization, there are slightly less than 10 Sophos SafeGuard users.

Security-wise, it's one of the best. I don't think there is much room for improvement.

The integration could be a little better.

I use this solution frequently and I can't think of anything I would change.

I have been using Sophos SafeGuard for two years.

Sophos SafeGuard is both scalable and stable.

I don't require any technical support so I don't have much experience with them.

The installation was very simple, I did it by myself. It only took roughly one hour.

We primarily use the solution for file encryption.

The reporting and file encryption are the solution's most valuable features.

The user experience and the quality of the features are good.

The tutorials need to be simplified. The existing ones need to be easier to follow and we could use some tutorials for basic setups. They should aim to be more like Cisco, which offers very good tutorials and materials.

If there was a way to automate the configuration, that would be ideal.

The solution is stable.

We haven't attempted to scale up yet, so I can't really comment on the scalability of the solution. Right now we have about 50 people using it.

We've never needed to contact technical support.

The initial setup was straightforward. When we deployed it, it was very fast. Even the configuration was easy. We had everything done within a week. It could have even been done faster, but the distributor was waiting on some information from the customer. We only needed two people for deployment.

We had the assistance of a distributor for the implementation.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.