Sophos UTM Reviews

• SSL VPN
• HTML5 VPN portal
• Application control
• Reverse proxy
• Web filtering

We used several vendor products before UTM, and now it is all in one box - firewall, proxy, and VPN. Sophos is much easier to manage and configure.

Every product has room for improvement.

I have used it for three years actively with several projects utilizing UTM.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

We don't have direct contact with Sophos support so I can’t rate the level of customer service and technical support properly.

I did. Sophos UTM is far more easier to configure and it is very intuitive with configuration.

Setup is easy and straightforward. It is a browser based tool, so you can access it from every location, and with different operating systems.

We did it in-house.

I have some technical advice, but generally, always prepare steps to implement Sophos UTM and test your implementation before using it in production environment.

The Zeroeth Rule:

Start with a hostname that is an FQDN resolvable in public DNS to your public IP. If you didn't do that, start over with a factory reset; it will save you hours of frustration.

1. Whenever something seems strange, always check the Intrusion Prevention, Application Control and Firewall logs
2. In general, a packet arriving at an interface is handled only by one of the following, in order, DNATs first, then VPNs and proxies and, finally, manual routes and manual Firewall rules, which are considered only if the automatic Routes and rules coming before hadn't already handled the traffic
3. Never create a Host/Network definition bound to a specific interface. Always leave all definitions with 'Interface
4. When creating DNATs for traffic arriving from the internet, in "Going to:" always use the "(Address)" object created by WebAdmin when the interface or the Additional Address was defined. Using a regular Host object will cause the DNAT to fail as the packets won't qualify for the traffic selector.
5. In NAT rules, it is a good habit to leave a field blank when not making a change. In the case of a service with a single destination port, this makes no difference. In the case of a service with multiple ports, or a Group, repeating the service makes the NAT rule ineffective.
6. There are only four reasons to sync users from AD to the ASG/UTM:
   • The user should be able to log on to a Remote Access VPN that uses certificates to authenticate the user
   • Email Protection is enabled and the user should receive Quarantine Reports and be able to manage personal black/whitelists and/or use Email Encryption/Signing
   • You want to do Reporting by Department for Web Protection (and I consider it a bug to require this when doing AD-SSO)
   • You want to use the Authentication Agent to populate "username (User Network)" objects
   • There's no other reason to sync users to WebAdmin - certainly not with AD-SSO

• Reliability
• Usability
• Number of features that fully cover goals
• Perfect support
• Possibility to get “under the hood”

The Sophos solution provides a branch to head office distributed network for a construction company across New Zealand, and the reliability of the equipment makes it possible to provide stable connections and is easy to implement and support.

Would be great if it would be possible to improve IPSEC site-to-site VPN connectivity over slow/unstable internet connections.

This particular configuration has been in use for about two and a half years.

No issues encountered.

Very rare cases of appliance lost admin password or web-service hangs.

No issues encountered.

Since I’m an engineer, I probably cannot evaluate this aspect, however as far as I know equipment order and upgrade was always fine

4.99 out of 5 – support is very helpful, only once there were misunderstanding about licensing and number of supported Sophos WAPs and that was resolved promptly and fully.

For this project, the Sophos infrastructure has been planned and deployed from the start and there has been no need to change it

It's logically straightforward and the transparent interface made possible a quick deployment. However, a little time was needed to get familiarized with the interface.

It was implemented in house.

Nothing is perfect, but with Sophos those are really small – sometimes it is incorrect firmware upgrade paths, or rare log in problems (device forgetting admin password). All those though can be fixed, there is plenty information in the Internet and support is usually awesome. Also, you need to plan the solution and costs involved, while having in mind potential growth of users/connections; e.g. creating virtual appliances and allocating resources (RAM, CPU, NICs) minding potential workload.

The web application firewall and web filtering. We are using the UTM to be the gateway for the private cloud solutions we offer.

Easy management of the firewall, with one URL to control the firewall/web filters for our entire cloud.

HA needs to be improved for the software appliance because if Sophos is deployed in ESXI/Hyper-V then the HA is unstable. Also, the web application firewall only allows the use of ports 80 and 443, and if we could use others ports than that would be a welcome addition.

For two years now in our datacenter, and also several deployments at some of our customers.

Setting up the link aggregation group (NIC teaming) gave us some problems with the ethernet VLAN option for WAN, but after a firmware update, the issue was resolved.

If you enable the intrusion prevention option in the firewall any Wordpress deployments on a Plesk server behind the firewall slows down to a crawl, and there is no fix yet. The current workaround is disabling the intrusion prevention option at the moment.

No issues yet.

7/10. Getting a new license for the SG220 sometimes takes a long time, but they will give you a 30 day demo license to compensate for it.

9/10. Any question or issue is solved within minutes after calling technical support.

SonicWALL was our previous product, and we switched to Sophos because of its ease of use.

When you start the initial setup you`re helped with wizards, but if you use the software appliance and make a mistake by selection wrong interfaces in the wizard it can result in the firewall becoming unreachable.nThe hardware appliance is (almost) plug & play.

We implemented it in-house.

It's around six to nine months.

We looked at several open-source firewall options whose names I will not mention, and the reason we did not use them was because of the ease of use, and what our support desk could do.

If you want an easy to manage, and powerful firewall then take look at Sophos UTM.

This is a next-generation firewall. I use it for mail security for clients. 

The mail security is very good. 

It's quite stable.

The solution can scale. 

The sanctions make it difficult for us in Iran to take full advantage of this product, like many others. 

It needs a better user interface. The one they have is not so good. 

I've used the solution for a while. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is very scalable. The solution is very easy to expand as needed. That's not a problem.

We have 500 or 600 clients on the solution. 

I do not use technical support. Having never dealt with them, I cannot speak to the level of service they provide. 

For sharing and mail security, the solution is very good. I'd recommend it to other users. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If they offered a better user interface, I would rate them higher. 

During the pandemic, telework grew, however, so did attacks. There was a higher degree of ransomware and so on. With Sophos, we have not had any incidents this year. The security provided has been good. It has proven to be okay for our needs.

The initial setup is very simple.

The solution is stable.

the scalability is good.

The solution needs to do better at covering mobile devices, although they may have an integrated solution for that purpose. 

I don't really know how it behaves when it comes to web server protection. We have no web servers of our own. I don't know how it behaves if we open our servers to the outside. My sense is that the degree of protection must be higher.

We haven't used the solution for very long. We've been using it for less than a year at this point. 

The stability has been good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability on offer is quite good. If a company needs to expand, it can do so. 

We are not a big company. We have about 70 or so people. 

Technical support is okay. It is provided by a local company, not Sophos directly.

Previously we did not have any integrated solutions. We had an antivirus of one kind, and a firewall of another. It was a good step for us to integrate all these features into one solution.

The initial setup was simple and straightforward. The deployment was fast. It only took about a week or so, maybe less. 

The pricing is reasonable. Of course, the customer would always like it to be lower, however, the quality to price ratio is positive.

I'm also aware of Fortinet options, however, they are more expensive if you look at Fortinet vs Sophos. 

We are customers and end-users. We came into the pandemic situation needing a VPN and the one offered by the Sophos behaves quite well. From the point of view of our users, it has been a positive experience.

I don't quite know by heart the version of the solution, however, it's quite recent. It's not the newest one. I saw that the brand new one which came out this year and we don't have that.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We use this solution as a firewall, for DCP filtering, applications, and training.

We need to speed up the support.

We have been using this solution for three years.

It's a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution but the only disadvantage is that when we use a proxy, we can bypass Sophos.

We have 50 customers. The maximum number of users in one device is approximately 4,000. It's a large network.

The support is okay, but it takes time to connect to the support team.

It is easy to install.

We only require one engineer to deploy and maintain this solution.

The appliance should be purchased and there is a fee for the license.

There is an option for a yearly licensing fee or for three years.

We recommend this solution. We complete between 20 and 30 installations per month.

I would rate Sophos UTM a nine out of ten.

• Network border protection for clients and internal company
• It is used for small to medium-sized businesses and networks.

Sophos SG has provided us with the tools to protect our networks, detect malicious activity, and customize security to our clients' needs.

• Sophos UTM Manager (SUM): It allows us to manage over 50 Sophos UTM devices from a central management console. 
• Creating rules, exceptions, and managing most features from SUM, and pushing to all or a section of devices as needed.

• SUM cannot manage app control
• Improve app control system as a whole
• Extend support for SG until XG has improved significantly.

The primary use case for using this product is as a firewall.

It has ease-of-use and it fits the purpose of our firewall protection needs.

The most valuable feature is that it is easy to administer. 

The price is an issue to consider for improvement.

The stability of the product is good.

We are not a very big organization, so we do not see any issues going into the future. We feel that it will continue to scale appropriately for our organization's needs.

We have experience with Sophus, as well.

The price is something that one will need to consider.