Sophos UTM Reviews

We use this solution for IPsec & site-to-site SSL VPN.

My environment involves connecting all of our branches with the head office through one Sophos XG 210 device. This is done using IPsec and SSL VPN, after which we apply a web filter, as well as an application filter to ensure that we are getting a secure connection.

It allows me to easily connect with more than forty-five remote sites and more than fifty remote users between IPsec and SSL VPN, applying the web filter and application filter to ensure a secure connection.

This solution also gives me varieties of VPN policies for good data encryption.

The most valuable features of this solution are:

• High Availability between IPsec site tunnels provides a valid continuous connection and ensures we have no downtime affecting our business.
• Log Viewer allows me to monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic, as well as view and block vulnerabilities.

I would like to see the SD-WAN feature improved. I want to manage many lines and load-balance them, getting high availability by making SLA tests according to:

1. Check interval.
2. Failures before inactive.
3. Restore link after.
4. SD-WAN Rules to control bandwidth, download and upload stream.

I switched to Sophos as it is more reliable.

This solution is less expensive than FortiGate. 

We did not evaluate other solutions prior to choosing this one.

We are using as a firewall product.

It helped to connect our satellite offices to the main Amazon infrastructure in a circular way.

It provides a solid firewall.

We had some problems with the configuration. They had provided a CloudFormation template, and we had to go several rounds to make it work. 

It's pretty stable. For our usage, it has been pretty good.

We are a small company with a small infrastructure. For our infrastructure, it is perfectly solid. I don't have experience using it on a larger scale.

They could definitely improve on the support, especially in other countries. Right now, it is just average. For example, we have a team in India. When they face issues, they have to go to Australia or talk to somebody in the US to receive support. They should be more responsive and have more local offices.

AWS has been pretty good. It is well integrated and pretty user-friendly. Initially, we experienced issues with the configuration because Sophos provided us a CloudFormation template, which caused us some back and forth. By now, the process may have improved.

Purchasing it through the AWS Marketplace went smoothly. We did not have any issues and the pricing was decent.

We decided to purchase through the AWS Marketplace because of the integration with the AWS infrastructure, firing it up and configuring it was very seamless.

We originally considered Barracuda and another solution.

We chose Sophos because we thought that it provided superior service. Also, they have a long history in the market, and I received a recommendation from one of my consultants.

I would recommend to take a look a product, as it is a good product apart from the improvements that I mentioned. We are very happy with the product so far.

It is used as a standalone. We don't integrate it with other systems.

We are using the AWS version of this product.

Regarding the use cases, the solution was deployed for a production client, which was a hardware production company.

The features that I have found most valuable in Sophos UTM are its scalability and feasibility, as well as the quality of its customer service, followed by the ease of maintenance and configuration of the product itself.

Palo Alto has a different market because of their dashboard, overall looks, and other features. They are costly, but their services are quite good. And they offer a different platform compared to their competitors. Their device operates differently from others. While Palo Alto and Sophos have similar features, they operate on different platforms, providing a superior user experience compared to existing devices. In short, the UI and UX are the areas of improvement in Sophos UTM and similar solutions compared to Palo Alto.

I have experience with Sophos UTM for nearly two years. Recently, I deployed two Sophos solutions, one with HA and one on a primary device. The deployment process for one of the companies was done last month.

It is a stable product.

It is a scalable product. So it is easy to scale it up.

The solution's customer service is good. I rate the solution's technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is quite easy because they have all the information on their website. Customer service is available anytime, especially when you set to start the device's configuration.

Since I was just a part of the initial configuration after deployment, I don't know the steps in the deployment process.

Both the technical and cost aspects are feasible since it is possible to obtain and use the device as a PnP solution. Considering cost and technical aspects, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Even if I compare Sophos UTM with other solutions, I don't think any pros or cons stick out since our clients are okay with the solution, and there has been no complaint regarding Sophos UTM.

My advice to others planning to use the solution is that it is quite easy. You can simply refer to the solution's blog or YouTube videos and install the solution. It's also quite easy to configure it. So, if you purchase it by yourself, you can configure it and use it on your particular network.

I love working with Palo Alto. So, I would like to give it a ten out of ten. Also, Palo Alto has a different market. So, I would always give a nine out of ten for other solutions. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use it as an internet firewall, and as our web application firewall.

I don't believe it has improved our organization; I don't actually like the product because of the features it is missing.

I would like this solution to support ICAP. Also, they no longer support on-premises management, and are forcing clients to use centralized management via the cloud, which I don't agree with.

We have been using this solution for seven years.

We don't find this to be fully stable; we have had to restart the firewall on a few occasions.

The customer support is not very good. They are quite slow, and there are delays in response to an issue being raised.

Negative

The initial setup was easy.

The implementation was carried out in-house, and the deployment took around eight hours to complete.

There was an up-front charge of around $70,000, to purchase the hub and license.  Beyond the initial cost, licenses are charged for annually, but they are good value for the service we receive.

I would only recommend this product to small businesses. I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten.

Sophos UTM is a complete firewall we use to protect from internet threats and check traffic from our network to the internet. It's a firewall covering all layers of protection.

Sophos has some plugins that run on the cloud, but it's transparent to the end-user. For example, there is something to identify threats on an email system called SenseStorm, which is connected to the Sophos Cloud and identifies new threats then spreads the same pattern to all Sophos installations in real-time. I can say that almost 100 percent of our customer companies who have a file solution use Sophos.

The three most important features for us are web protection, web server protection, and network protection.

Sophos UTM sometimes falls short in high-availability environments. They used to launch firmware that didn't work very well in a high-availability environment. 

I've been using Sophos UTM for the last five years, but we started using Astaro Security Gateway, the predecessor to Sophos UTM, in 2002.

Sophos UTM is a strong solution. I give it a 10 out of 10 for stability.

Sophos UTM is scalable.

The initial setup is somewhat tricky. You need to understand networking concepts well, and the company must have good policies for internet access. However, it's not that complicated. I would say it's an intermediate difficulty, but I also have a lot of experience with this solution. It might be challenging for a new technician. We do all the deployment in-house, and it takes about three business days. Our team consists of two technicians and me, the manager. 

Sophos UTM isn't cheap. It's in the middle, so not the cheapest, but not the most expensive. It's average. If you buy the full suite, you don't need to pay for add-ons, but if you buy some partial products, you have to pay to deploy more features.

I rate Sophos UTM 10 out of 10. It's the most reliable solution in the firewall market. Considering the price and quality of the product, Sophos UTM is the best solution.

Our primary use cases include: 

• Remote SSL connection
• Web-filtering
• Web server protection
• WAF application.
• Firewall rules

We have securely deploy systems accesible only behind encrypted ssl vpn and all user can access without the risk of data exposure.

The most valuable feature is the price. I've been requesting prices all over these years between different solutions like Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point and Sophos has been the cheapest and the best of all of them that I have tried. I have been working with Fortinet, it's a fact that the sophos price is surprisingly better.

I have also worked with Check Point and it's not far enough from what Sophos can do. In terms of quality and functionality, Sophos is very useful and better than the competition.

Sophos should improve its ability to check something like bandwidth consumption for users or something more real-time.

real time trafic graph most show specific info from user, ip and bandwith, in my personal opinion i have seen better traffic graphs in open source firewalls.

I have been using Sophos UTM for six years.

It's very stable. In all the time I have been using it, I haven't seen it fail or gets stuck.

Scalability is not a complex issue and is something you can do within 20 minutes. I've been managing three UTMs, one with 50 users, another one with around 150, and the biggest one has 3,000 users.

i used PFSense, the capabilities of UTM sophos y very much higher and powerfull.

The initial setup was straightforward. It depends on the rules, but a basic setup can take up to seven to 15 minutes max.

Based on cost compare with other vendor who bill per license and OTP users, the ROI have been set as far as 6 moths.

SOphos is the best alternative in features, specifications and lower price.

yes i did, Fortinet, Checkpoint, Palo Alto, Meraki.

It's a good solution, I would say to go for it. 

I would rate Sophos UTM a nine out of ten.

We use it for antivirus.

It meets our compliance needs in an elastic computer environment.

It meets our compliance needs for antivirus.

The printed provisioning is the primary thing that needs improvement.

It is a little too CPU resource intensive, so we would like to see improvements there.

We are running about a couple hundred EC2 instances. Overall, the AWS Marketplace product should be a better fit, but it is a little pricier.

When we need technical support, we just engage the vendor, then figure out what our requirements are from there.

The integration and configuration of this product on our AWS environment is a little clunky right now.

The product is a standalone in terms of integration.

Going forward, we need to look at the provisioning pieces and the resource utilization.

The AWS version is easier to provision than the on-premise version.