Sophos XG Reviews

I'm using the solution mainly for its firewall application and to prevent intrusion in the system. The XG platform is very powerful from the perspective of identification and to prevent potential attacks on the system due to its the capacity to predict and to anticipate the potential damage on the system.

It's integrated inside the system, meaning that it can control all the endpoints in the system and talk with them and identify any potential situation. It can also isolate one area inside the system without compromising the entire system. This allows you to isolate the initial problem without involving the entire infrastructure. 

You have real-time control of all your infrastructure. It is integrated with the hardware and offers good performance alongside the hardware and by the firmware, and these work together to control the entire infrastructure.

The real-time control on offer is excellent.

We really appreciate that you can segment and quarantine certain sections of your system without having to shut down the entire operation.

The product has artificial intelligence that has the capability to quickly identify which could be the potential risk mainly for intrusions like ransomware or a new kind of typology of attacks that are in place right now. 

The idea is to mainly prevent the condition and not to manage the situation, as, if that happens, in many ways, it's already too late. It's to identify the condition that can help the company to prevent or mainly to reduce the risk of an intrusion. In that sense, its performance is excellent. 

The product is doing it job without affecting the system with a heavy load. The activity on offer is very light in terms of resources that are required by the system. It does not require a lot of resources in terms of memory, et cetera. There is no performance impact on the system. The customer doesn't detect its presence on the system when it's working, and yet they still get all of the great benefits of protection.

The solution has been quite stable. 

It's a product that is in continuous improvement and is following what the customer is asking. They are taking inputs and designing new releases specifically according to the client and their needs.

It's one of the best products on the market as it really understands where the market is moving and iterates based on the future. It's constantly improving. It does a great job at keeping confidentiality while guaranteeing security.

The solution doesn't just offer theoretical security, it really does offer very good, real-time security and delivers on its promise to the client.

There is no specific features request right now really. I see that all the features that Sophos is implementing and is proposing on the market follow exactly what the market is asking. It's difficult to identify something that is missing compared with what the market can ask as one of the most important things that Sophos does is have the capability to anticipate in a certain way what the market expects. As a leader on the market, they tend to have the solution just before the market is asking them for it. 

The solution could offer a bit more integration with other systems, with other platforms - just to be able to extend the capability and to interface with other kinds of platforms or systems that I can find on the market as it gives the possibility to improve the level of integration.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable.

The solution is quite scalable. You have to consider that all Sophos products are scalable. This is one of the main characteristics of the system. It means that you can start with a base solution that is very simple and improve this step by step without losing what you have done in the past. It's scalable in the sense that you have a different layout that you can cover, however, you don't have to dismiss what you have done in the past. You have just to integrate. In this way, if you consider the cost of implementation for the company, it has the possibility to optimize the cost because the company has the possibility to appreciate the system initially, and then improve the system step by step without losing what has been done in the past.

This means the company has the possibility to distribute the cost if you're in a certain period of growth. Normally some companies start to say, "I want to guarantee to control to the outside with a certificate and give the possibility to access my data in a controlled way. After that, I want to extend the security on the email that is managed by the company. I want to encrypt the data on the server and so on." All these features can be approached in a step-by-step manner instead of all at once, and you can implement them on the system in different ways and at different times.

We normally have about 50 users and around five technicians.

I also currently use Cisco products alongside Sophos.

However, we did not previously use a solution that was different from Sophos.

The initial setup is not so complicated. The system is not complicated to understand and also in can be installed without a very high level of expertise. Of course, if you have this kind of expertise, you can obtain from the system the maximum performance that the system can do, however, it means that you are not obliged to be a guru to be able to use these kinds of products. You can use these kinds of products just as an IT manager inside the company without having or needing special knowledge. 

Otherwise, you can leave to Sophos with the capability of doing something like a close box. You are sure that Sophos is able to guarantee the level of security that you are expecting. You can have it be automatic, or you can choose to go more manual in its operations. For example, if you were a professional photographer, you'd probably like a manual experience, as it would allow you more leeway with your craft, and if you were an amateur, you 'ld likely prefer an automatic camera that handles the heavy lifting for you. Sophos, in that sense, is the same. If you want, you can configure single parameters, or you can leave it to Sophos to give you something out-of-the-box.

In any case, if you stay on the automatic configuration, you are guaranteed that the system can provide the correct level of service that you want. It means that it's not required to have an expert. That said, you need of course to have a minimum level of knowledge, as it's clear that you need to know what you are managing. Starting from that, you can obtain what you need without moving into an advanced configuration.

Typically, a configuration takes about half a day or so, if you go that route. It doesn't take long, as those who would handle it would know what they are doing.

We handled the implementation ourselves, in-house. We did not need the assistance of an implementor or consultant. I have enough knowledge on the solution to manage it myself.

I'm mainly a user. Sometimes I handle installations.

I'm using the latest version of the solution. I don't have the version number on-hand.

We do plan on continuing to use the solution. I've been quite please with it overall.

I would recommend the solution to others. It's worked quite well so far and really leads the market.

I would rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the security solutions that we implement for our clients. The primary use for Sophos XG is to secure the internet for an organization. It does a bit of antivirus scanning, application filtering, web filtering, and normal firewalling. Security, obviously.

Some of our clients also have Sophos UAP and access points are also included in Sophos, which is the same with FortiGate.

Sophos XG is easy to manage. You've got the cloud logging and you can manage all of your Sophos firewalls from one cloud, the Sophos Central Portal.

The most valuable feature is endpoint security. If you want to install antivirus and firewalling on endpoints, then Sophos is the best option.

What I don't like about Sophos is that applying policies can sometimes take longer, and there can even be a bit of a network interruption. With FortiGate, it's just one click and then you go, but with Sophos, sometimes the wheel keeps spinning for several seconds.

The SD-WAN capability is not as good as it is in FortiGate, and is something that should be improved.

I have been working with Sophos XG for approximately two and a half years.

Stability-wise, it's almost as good as FortiGate.

I've been selling FortiGate for 10 years and Sophos for two and a half years. I think that Sophos is just about on par with FortiGate. We just had a small thing with a client, but I don't know if that's really going to be reason enough. In terms of stability, I think they are quite good. The issue we had was the locks, and it was causing slowness or interruptions, but that was really not an issue. It's a small thing.

Sophos XG is very scalable. You can go from small to large-sized use cases.

I think that the technical support is very good, and similar to FortiGate,

I actually dealt directly with a Sophos engineer and I must admit, they've been very fortunate that the guy can help even on the weekends and so forth. I'm very impressed with that.

I primarily work with FortiGate, but I am currently dabbling in OPNSense to see if I can learn it. I've also installed Cisco in the past, as well as Sophos.

Although about 80% of our clients ask for FortiGate, some of our clients ask for Sophos instead. For example, there are some banks and commercial institutions that ask for Sophos.

Sophos is better than FortiGate with respect to endpoint protection.

The initial setup is as easy as it is with FortiGate. These products are definitely easier to install than a solution like OPNsense because it is just a hardware appliance.

The price of this solution is mid-range. Obviously, it will never beat OPNsense because that product is available free of charge. Sophos XG is not expensive for a firewall, especially when you compare it with Check Point. Check Point is a really expensive product.

Sophos XG is a bit more expensive than companies like BitDefender and Kaspersky, but their endpoint software is very good.

The suitability of this product depends on the use case. If somebody wants to have full endpoint protection then Sophos is the best choice. If they just want a normal UTM without endpoint software, then FortiGate is slightly better, but only slightly because of the SD-WAN capabilities. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We essentially use Sophos XG to protect our customers. Most of our customers use remote VPN connections. They also use the WAF protection for exposed internet WEB servers.

The web application firewall or WAF is very useful. Web application firewalls help keep your servers safe from hackers by scanning activity and identifying probes and attacks.
Using the Web Application Firewall (WAF), also known as reverse proxy, Sophos
UTM lets you protect your webservers from attacks and malicious
behavior like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, directory
traversal, and other potent attacks against your servers.
You can define external addresses (virtual webservers) which should be
translated into the "real" machines in place of using the DNAT rule(s).
From there, servers can be protected using a variety of patterns and
detection methods.

This function has been completely re-developed in XG, relatively of the UTM-9 version, and it works fine. I protect many internet web servers (IIS) for my customers with this function, due to of a lot of attempted attacks. It's a very useful and relatively simple to implement in Sophos XG.

Obviously, like all security systems, it is not a "fire and forget" configuration. It is necessary to properly analyze the system to be protected, create an appropriate policy and monitor its behavior once activated.

https://support.sophos.com/sup...

I think Sophos XG can improve some annex features. Like in DHCP, we can't make IP reservations in the range. We must reserve out of the range, which is not good. It will not be the same as the DHCP function in a Windows Server. We can't make an IP reservation in the range of the DHCP in the Sophos.

Better in the next release? I hope...

Sophos can also improve the debugging of the WAF function and provide a better resolution in the log, in the attached WEB log. The initial error doesn't appear. You must tail the console log to find the source pattern, cause of the error.

I have been using Sophos XG for about tree years.

Sophos XG is stable. I don't encounter problems that are typical with broken systems. But bugs in the system exists. Last example, I discovered a bug is in the asymmetric routing implementation. In a specific network configuration, asymmetric routing, with sub-net 25 doesn't work, but mask 24 and mask 26 works!!

But this is just a bug, and Sophos' support is very good to correct quickly, ASAP.

I only had a break function once because of the appliance BIOS. The Sophos support send me a new BIOS very quickly, and the problem was resolved.

I have a lot of issues with Sophos technical support. I still have some pending issues that need to be resolved. It's very odd in the beginning because your first contact is with the sub-part of another sub-part of Sophos based in India or Pakistan. It's very odd to have a quick connection with the second level or third level engineer at Sophos in UK.

I have personal contact with some security managers and the sub-part manager of Sophos support. When they don't resolve a problem quickly, I send an email, or I call my contacts Sophos UK, and it happens! They have good reactivity.

We start with Sophos UTM-9, the old version of Sophos firewalls, and then we switched to the XG.

The initial setup of the last version of Sophos XG is good. The initialization is very simple, but you must prepare it. You need an Sophos customer account , on the web cell, to declare easy a firewall.

It'll ask for an account, and you can create it in the interface, but it's better to prepare it before in the Sophos site, to have the account ready, for the first initialization of the firewall.

The deployment time depends on the system's complexity, the number of ISPs, the number of sub-nets, WAF functions and VPNs. 

It's normally very easy for a little company. A retail company with 20-30 computer-users, and a simple connection to the internet, it'll take about four to six-hours to deploy. If you need to fine-tune it, maybe two hours more. So like eight hours or a day to deploy.

Sophos XG isn't expensive compared to Check Point. Sure, Check Point is the Rolls-Royce of firewalls: It's great, it's fun, technically good tunned, but it's very expensive. 

But the specs and technical side of Sophos XG are close to Check Point, and the price is lower. It's better for our customers. I can do the same complex configurations with Sophos XG that I used to do on Check Point firewalls.

The main difference between Sophos XG and Check Point is keylogging and working with clouds. Both FortiGate and Watchguard doesn't have  in log packet analyzer to do so deeply. 

For me personally, Check Point firewall is the best firewall, because the log console is the power key of the firewalls. But Sophos XG is the main challenger of Check Point, I think. You can open the debugging packet analyzer, like a Wireshark, directly in the WEB log console. This function is a powerful tool and must be discovered, because it's very useful for quick debugging.

If I had to rank them, it's Check Point first, second, Sophos XG, and in third with FortiGate and Watchguard. We chose Sophos XG because it's much cheaper than Check Point.

I think it's very important to choose the right appliance first. Implementing a lot of things like VPN, IPS strong protection and WAF functions will stress more the appliance CPU. It depend also with the number of connections and number of users too.

Sophos XG is a lot of fun because you can change the appliance model without changing the configuration. You can back-up the configuration of the old appliance and import into the new appliance without spending hour for migration. It's powerful, and the new system is quickly operational.

Another key is VPN LAN to LAN in SSL, allowing connections to be set up much faster. Is this the end of the old IPSEC protocol? No, but it is a function which increases the versatility of the Sophos XG firewall.

Last, but not least, the virtual appliance works perfectly, in private or public clouds. Very simple to implement, work perfectly.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Sophos XG a nine. 

The antivirus features are valuable.

The price should be cheaper. Xstream must be included in future releases.

I have been using the solution for five years.

I rate the tool’s stability a seven out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten. Our clients are SMBs.

I rate the ease of setup a ten out of ten. The solution is deployed both on-premise and on the cloud. The deployment takes half an hour.

I rate the pricing a six out of ten.

We are distributors. We sell the solution. We have many customers. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

The product’s most valuable feature is the user management system.

The product's technical support services could be better. 

We have been using Sophos XG for three to four years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight or nine out of ten.

We have 15 to 20 Sophos XG users. I rate its scalability an eight or nine.

We do not receive enough technical support services from Sophos XG.

Neutral

The initial setup was complicated because we didn’t have executives with proper expertise. It took us two months to complete.

I rate Sophos XG’s pricing a seven out of ten.

I rate Sophos XG an eight out of ten.

We use the latest version.

We are very familiar with the solution. It's pretty straightforward, our personnel is properly trained and we use it efficiently. The solution integrates very easily with other brands.  I've done VPN tunnels with other brands, and that was fine as well. The solution is quite stable and we don't have any issues with it. The VPN is easy and has good logging, monitoring and notifications.

When compared with Sophos XG, Fortinet lacks the notifications and reporting features. 

When it comes to improvements that the vendor can make, we see that the cloud integration for managing all the firewalls is essentially a replacement of the on-prem version we had. It's not mature yet, being still in its infancy stage. That would require some improvement. As I have many firewalls, having the ability to delegate access to use, such as exists with Microsoft CSP or other services, would be a nice feature to see. 

Also, as a tech person, I know that executives do not wish to receive complicated reports, so a simplified executive report for executives would be a nice improvement. This would save us from having to explain issues which are beyond the scope of their knowledge. 

Sophos XG is basically a mix of UTM9, Check Point and several other technologies. It is essentially a merging of technologies. We've been using it since version UTM9, at which point we switched to Sophos XG..

The solution is quite stable. 

The solution is scalable, but an organization should assess in advance its size based needs. Say, for example, a company utilizes the XG 125 version, but grows rapidly. At this point it may need to switch to the 210 version. Yet, switching from one version to another would not really present an issue. One can restore the backup configuration version on the new hardware and be up and running. 

Technical support is pretty good, although I did have some issues with its availability during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though this seems to have been a challenge faced by all major support companies. There were delay issues owing to their teleworking, but the support they offer is quite supportive and they have all the necessary documentation.  The truth is that I have a need for many cases, although the ones I require have to do with things that are out of my control, such as licensing or the occasion of a new app that failed to show up in the console. I have many sub-sites and I did face a serious issue. Technical support was pretty helpful even though I had to redesign the typology of one of my sites. They actually tried assisting me with the original design and I found them to be quite helpful and to possess a good base of knowledge on the site. 

It is important for a person to properly learn the features of any product so that he can optimize its utilization. The setup of the solution is pretty straightforward. What is truly important for a person with only a basic network background is to undergo proper training, so that he may learn about all the features and how to configure them. 

For any product a person uses, it is a good idea to do a test run. Sophos allows for its product to be evaluated without any financial commitment. It offers a free virtual machine for home use testing of the features. 

At present, Fortinet seems to have a slightly higher rating than Sophos XG, so if it were also to turn out to be more cost effective this would affect my rating of it. The reason is that this factor does have an impact on the decisions reached by CEOs when it comes to cost-benefit analysis.

This said, I rate Sophos XG as a nine out of ten, because we are very happy with it and don't really have any issues. We have actually been replacing Cisco normal routers, not sets, with Sophos and we're very happy with them.

We use Sophos XG for the firewall.

I like the tunneling part which we are using for the VOIP. We have various other sites where we connect via tunneling. The tunneling part is very fast and easy to implement.

The deployment is very easy for my network team, and it is very easy to implement policies. The support that Sophos provides for the upgrade of new features and their interaction with the customer is very good.

Customer engagement is what I like about the product. We are very well informed about what is going on and new best practices. If anything new has gone wrong or anything in the world of cybersecurity we should know about, they will let us know.

Any firewall is dependent on how you use it. It's also on the user, how you configure it, what you allow, and what you don't allow, and so on. The ease of defining policies and the customer connect is what I appreciate about Sophos.

It would be better if they made their own hardware like Palo Alto and Fortinet. They use their own ASICs and claim it is more secure. 

The SD-WAN can be improved. The traffic optimization somehow needs to be improved, or there is a scope for improvement in Sophos XG.

It would be better if they moved towards the cloud side of things. Now a lot of things are moving on to the cloud.

I have been using Sophos XG for a couple of years.

Sophos XG is a stable product.

Sophos XG is scalable.

The Sophos forum and Sophos direct support are excellent. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Sophos support a ten.

We had Cyberoam, which Sophos took over.

The initial setup is straightforward and took us about a week to deploy.

An internal team made up of two people implemented Sophos XG.

We generally buy it for a three-year license.

I would recommend Sophos XG to potential users.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Sophos XG an eight.

We manage all the network services, like DHCP, of each branch office.

It has helped us because we have identified some of the loopholes in our assets that we did not know existed.

I like using the combination of XG firewalls and the XDR product with the end user. I also like the integration of all the solutions and the visual of all our clients and the traffic routing in to the network from inside the console. The synchronization and the integration with all the products in the central office, such as Office 365 or AWS, make it a valuable solution.

We can configure rules with the user, traffic, etc., making it a very versatile solution for our network.

Better instructions should be provided as part of the technical support so that we can understand the functionalities. This will help us to troubleshoot faster.

We've been using Sophos XG for three years.

It is stable.

Sophos XG is a scalable solution. We have about 1,000 users.

Technical support is good, in general.

We used Fortinet, and we changed the solution because there were additional costs for reporting, licensing, and centralization. If we compare Fortinet to Sophos XG, the XG firewall costs less and performs better. That's one of the reasons that we moved to XG.

The other and the most important reason is the integration with our security solution, Sophos XDR.

The initial setup was very easy. It's much easier than that for other products. 

Deployment and maintenance can be done by one or two people. I am a specialist, and an engineer and I worked on the deployment and maintenance. 

The provider of the solution implemented it, and it took about a day.

We have seen an improvement in security not only in terms of technology but also in terms of internal practices in our company.

We predicted that it would take three years to obtain an ROI.

We bought the three-year license, and there are no additional costs.

We evaluated Check Point, Barracuda, and Palo Alto.

It's a good product, and you should go ahead with it.

I would rate Sophos XG at nine on a scale from one to ten.