Sophos XG Reviews

We are using Sophos XG, but not the latest version. The solution works as the main gateway. We are a small company of 250 employees so we also use the solution as a router.

The hardware and VPN connections are slow so we are planning on upgrading the solution. Next month we will be replacing the Sophos XG we have as it is reaching the end of life next year. We will be purchasing the XG 3000 to gain more options in the VPN tunnels.

The two most valuable feature of Sophos XG is, one the option to filter according to different applications and two, the integration with the Active Directory.

Over the last six months, we have noticed that the hardware is slow, especially the VPN connections.

Sophos would benefit if they could improve the integration with Active Directory. It does not function consistently and we have to reconfigure it to make it function again. 

Integration with IPA, which is like Active Directory for Linux servers, would be a nice feature to include.

I have been using Sophos XG for three years.

This solution is very stable. We have not had any problems in the three years we have been using Sophos XG. We did have one infection that gained access to one server in the DMZ but it was because the rules were not well configured and not because of the product.

We haven't had to scale the solution. 

Support from Sophos XG has been fine for what we have required.

We had been using Astaro. We selected Sophos XG because we knew it would be easy to set up and configure as the two solutions are similar.

Previously we were working with Astaro, so the setup and configuration of Sophos XG was easy. The implementation took less than a month.

The company that sold the firewall solution provided support hours while we were migrating the rules of our old firewall. They provided us with advice on some of the rules, especially on the routing to connect to a branch office.

We purchase an annual standard license.

I recommend Sophos XG if you are coming from pfSense or Astaro as the migration will be really easy. The learning path will also be easy. If you are coming from Barracuda or Cisco it will be more difficult especially the web interface of the firewall is not intuitive.

I would rate Sophos XG an 8 out of 10.

We use and implement Sophos XG for our customers for border security, just to make sure that nobody gets in and that everybody who tries to get out will have some kind of filter or protection.

I can say that it has not exactly improved how our the organization functions, but on the security side it makes everything much more secure, especially for the users. They can't surf the web without some kind of protection for safety and control, and we are alerted if somebody is trying to access some strange websites or trying to access something the company does not allow.

The features that I have found most valuable are first the Web Filter and the Web Application Firewall SD-Wan on Version 18. Additionally, RED Tunnels allows a Sophos vital to speak to another Sophos vital in headquarters.

The main problem with Sophos XG today is that it doesn't have a feature where you actually know the quality of an international link, which would allow us to we know if the link is operational or not. We need more information. It's losing packets on the network. It's high latency. So, we need more information to know if the link is really bad or really good, and today, we only know if it's working and this just isn't enough.

I have been using Sophos XG for about six, seven years.

Sophos XG is really robust because of all the implementations you currently have active. We don't have problems on the hardware or a bug on the software or anything like that. It's really, really rare. Most of the problems are from requests for our customers asking to make a particular website available for some parts of the company and things like this. Just some little configurations on the web filter.

We actually do studies to already know before implementation which firewall will be able to handle all the operations. It is really rare to need to change the firewall or to miss a configuration and put in equipment that can't handle the network. We have never had a case where we had to replace a hardware because it couldn't handle the network. It has always been easy to make a survey to get the right equipment for the right amount of people, and every time we need to make a new implementation we have the study making scalability easy, because each hardware is for a specific customer.

If I were to rate support from zero to 10, I would say about six or seven. The Portuguese Support is really bad. It's really not good. Every time you have an issue that's a little bit more complex, it's better to speak to the Global Support than the Latin American Support.

Today the initial setup is simple since we have been using it for a long time and have implemented it for several customers. So now it is really easy for us.

We are the resellers.

My advice to anyone considering Sophos XG is that it has a good cost-benefit. Let's just put it that it does the job right.

On a scale of one to ten, I would say Sophos XG is a nine.

We're using Sophos XG within one business unit for security. We use it for the firewall and mapping some services.

Sophos XG's price is right, and it's easy to manage. It's a good fit for our current needs at the moment. 

Sophos XG's user interface has some room for improvement. 

We started using Sophos XG in June of this year, so it has only been a few months. 

I think Sophos XG is stable.

Sophos XG is scalable. We have about 600 users here in Mexico, and everyone is behind this solution. I think it's possible we might increase usage, and we've discussed this with our corporate office in Germany. We could decide to go with another product, but we might expand Sophos if it performs well.

Support is one area where I have some issues. Sophos support isn't that good. 

In some companies where I've worked, I used Fortinet and ASA with FirePOWER from Cisco. In some places, I used Meraki with the MX and the Advance Security licensing. I have some issues with other technologies. Last year, they had Sophos UTM on the devices, but there was an opportunity was to switch our clients to Sophos XG and try out the solution.

Setting up Sophos XG is too easy. It took about two hours. The only part of the solution that I deployed was the firewalls. It's something I do all the time in my business unit, so it was quick. We have two people responsible for deployment and maintenance, including me. 

I had some support from a partner.

A Sophos XG license costs approximately $45,000 

I rate Sophos XG nine out of 10. Our experience so far has been good, but maybe we'll come across another solution that's at the same or a higher level.

We use Sophos XG with medical institutions and corporate banks that we work with. There are approximately 20 employees working with this product in our company.

Being centralized, Sophos provides us threat protection there. Even with standalone, we are able to provide the Sophos firewall. Having an internal dashboard and a single dashboard with some endpoints is also valuable. By using Sophos endpoint and the firewall, synchronized security is easy.

I would like to see improvement with service and support. LAN inbound and outbound traffic requires more control and an additional stop. 

We have been using Sophos XG for almost 10 years. We are partners with Sophos.

Stability and performance is good.

The solution is easy to scale.

There is no maintenance required with Sophos XG because it is a cloud product.

Previously I was using Cyberoam and Fortinet. We switched because there was a lot of hardware, and the performance was not satisfactory. We were experiencing space concerns with the hardware, the dual processor, and even the single processor. This also meant that synchronized security was not there as well.

The initial set up of the solution was simple. It took about 20 minutes.

We implemented the software on our own.

The price is cheaper compared to others.

I would recommend Sophos XG because it is easy to deploy at customer locations and it is priced well. I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.

We use Sophos XG for network security as a firewall for our company.

I have found configuring the ports to be easier in Sophos XG compared to the other devices.

Sophos XG could improve the policies, they are a bit confusing when creating them. There are many options that make it confusing and it could be simplified.

I have been using Sophos XG for approximately two years.

The Stability and performance are quite good. We haven't seen any problems.

The solution is scalable.

I would rate the scalability of Sophos XG an eight out of ten.

We have approximately 10 people using this solution in my organization.

My customers are using this solution on a daily basis.

I have contacted support once or twice to receive some clarification. I had a good experience.

I have used other solutions preciously and FortiGate's user interface is much easier to use when compared to Palo Alto and Sophos. Additionally, in Palo Alto, assigning the ports are more user-friendly.

The installation is straightforward.

I did the implementation of Sophos XG myself and it took approximately 20 minutes.

There is no maintenance is required for this solution.

Our networking team is approximately 10 people that use the solution.

The Palo Alto solution is expensive and the FortiGate is less expensive than Palo Alto. The Sophos XG would be priced in the middle of the two.

There are some fees but you can purchase a bundle package.

My advice to those wanting to use this solution is if you don't have experience, don't use it.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Sophos XG a seven out of ten.

I am a system integrator. We integrate SG, XG, and XGS.

We are also deploying it on Azure on-premises for our clients.

Sophos XG is a firewall. It can protect your internal users if it is on-premises. It can publish applications such as websites, it can also protect your internal networks like IPS, and IDS. It provides you with VPN Access, and it gives you reports on the consumption of the internet.

If you have deployed the endpoint between the antivirus in Sophos, it can also communicate with your endpoint and protect your users if infected.

It's a complete firewall solution that has everything.

It is very useful.

It competes with the majority of the market's products, including Palo Alto and Fortinet.

We always strive for more features.

We could see the bandwidth use right away with the prior version, which was the SG version. The current bandwidth consumption is no longer shown in the XG and XGS.

They are nearly a complete solution. However, they are missing this feature with the ability to view the current bandwidth usage. We have requested this, but have not had a reply yet. It was in SG before but it was removed in XG.

We have been working with Sophos XG for six years. 

We started with SG, then XG, and now XGS nine years ago.

It can be deployed both on the cloud and on-premises. 

Sophos XG is very stable. We haven't had a single issue with stability in the nine years we have been using Sophos.

All electric appliances rely on a stable electric current, which requires the use of a UPS, and a backup power supply. The main issue is the stability of the power.

All Sophos appliances are SSD-based, which means the hard drive in the appliance is solid-state.

we have deployed more than 50, 60 for our customers in Kuwait and we haven't had an issue or, any RMA.

When purchasing a firewall, as a customer, you must first plan, consult with your partner(s), and decide on the sizing. If you buy an XGS 230, for example, it can support up to 200 users and 50 VPNs. If you buy the wrong product, you won't be able to scale it up.

You should always size upfront. If you have a hundred users, you buy an appliance that can support 150. The license is the license.

It's all about the hardware. If you purchase small hardware and you know that after one year you're going to have more employees then it is wrong.

It's not a server, where you can just add more drives, It only has expansion units for the network. If you need to add fiber, for example, you can. There are expansion units, but you can't expand the architecture of the firewall.

We have more than 50 customers.

We haven't required any technical support. I have however heard from my peers that they have not had any issues with the customer support.

They have offices in India, Dubai, and even in the United Kingdom. As we are certified Gold partners in Kuwait, we haven't had any issues with the Sophos team. They are quite responsive when you have a tender to submit. I have no complaints at all.

in the past, we also integrated Palo Alto.

The initial setup is easy and straightforward. As certified partners, this is something that we do every week. If the customers provide you with the network details, you can have it up and running in 30 minutes with no issues.

It's a problem if you don't know your firewall, or how to deploy it, or know how to put the proper rule in place. It is very important that in any firewall if the customer doesn't know what rule should be in place, it is possible they will create the wrong rule and expose the network.

You have to have a certified person to maintain the solution. How many you will need depends on the number of customers. If you have a lot of customers, you will need two technical people. It also depends on the size of your business. One is fine but as you grow with more customers, you will need at least two to deploy and maintain the solution.

I don't have any issues with the price. The price varies depending on the market. The price of Sophos in Europe differs from that in our region, GCG, and from that in the United States. You will notice that each region has a different pricing structure. 

Customers will always try to minimize the cost. When compared to other products, Sophos licensing is very affordable.

They have already released the XGS. If you are referring to the previous version, XG. It is still in production and available for purchase. They have already released the XGS, which is the next generation of the XG. It has a more advanced architecture. Now that we have passed XG, there's XGS on the market.

Remember to size your customers. You'll need to know how many web applications you will be publishing, how many end customers the company has, and how many of them will need to connect to the VPN. It's a formula that, based on the data, that will determine which appliance you require. You can start with a little one, but it's best to understand the requirements first.

We are very happy with Sophos products.

I would rate Sophos XG a ten out of ten.

I enjoy synchronized security, where you have to synchronize both the firewall and the endpoint. When I deploy a firewall, I integrate it with the endpoint so that they can send the security heartbeat from the endpoint to the firewall. In the Sophos firewall, there's deep inspection, which works quite well. Sophos has the web application firewall inbuilt. This is unlike other firewalls, where you have to integrate with another standalone web application firewall. Being inbuilt in Sophos, you just have to configure an application so that it's more of a policy, and you're good to go. It's pretty simple in terms of the user. 

We've deployed quite a number for our users and our customers, and the feedback is quite positive in terms of management and also administration.

The technical support is pretty good. 

The initial setup is easy.

There's quite a number of items on offer. When you look at Gartner, it's doing well. The uptake in the market has been wonderful and currently, it's competing with other top firewalls such as Check Point, Fortinet, and Palo Alto.

XG is at its end of life. People are moving to XGS. With those changes on the horizon, a client might end up in, maybe 10 years, having four or five appliances, which they might not use. I don't know what Sophos is doing to maybe change this. Right now, we've moved from XG to XGS.

Another feature, which might be good and which other vendors are maybe exploring is the NAC. Sophos doesn't have a NAC solution. 

Maybe they can improve on their WAF. Currently, they have the inbuilt. 

They could work on their SD-WAN solution. I have seen it. It's not that competitive compared to other vendors. We've had some device issues.

I've been dealing with the solution for the last four years.

In terms of when it's in the network, it's stable compared to other firewalls, where I have had some issues. I had a case with another firewall, which the client changed to Sophos and it was not that stable as the client had to go and actually restart the firewall. The challenge comes in terms of stability when, let's say, the engineer doing the scoping does the round-sizing for the firewall. This causes the IPS to become overloaded or overworked, so it disconnects the traffic at the port level. In terms of stability, I might say sometimes we might experience challenges maybe when the sizing is not done correctly. That's why we might experience that disconnect at the interface level where the internet gets disconnected, however, that's the case of sizing, not the product itself. In terms of stability, it's stable in the network.

In terms of Sophos' support, they have been wonderful. I had a device issue and I found the return policy to be quite simple. 

Their technical support is pretty straightforward. When you raise a ticket, the feedback is immediate, and you are assigned a support person. It's been a wonderful experience.

Even to the end-user, it's a pretty straightforward system that they have. A user would just log into support.id, then key in their credentials and raise a support ticket. It's pretty simple.

I'm also familiar with Check Point, FortiGate, and Palo Alto. We also used to use Sonic Wall, however, we've moved to Sophos.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's not overly complex.

I've compared Check Point, CloudGen Network Security, and Sophos XG previously for clients. Not being biased to any vendor, normally, in this region, what normally happens is the budget. You might recommend Check Point to a customer, however, Check Point is a bit expensive, so you might end up losing the deal. What you would recommend, is Check Point as the Quantum, as the firewall. Sophos is doing quite well in terms of the endpoint for the workstations and the servers, the physical and the virtual. Likely it would be a good idea to recommend Sophos Security. That said, if the client has the budget, you'd recommend Check Point as a firewall. It's always good to do a bit of comparison and advise the client as to what is best for them.

We've actually deployed and supported quite a number of the products, from XG105 to XG3430.

Sophos is on-prem mostly, however, now there's another product for Sophos, for the endpoints, which is cloud-based.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's one of the best products. We have deployed quite a number of them - almost 20 - and I've not seen any of my clients complain.

We use Sophos Firewall for our environment.

The Sophos Firewall, from our interaction and the way we are using it, is a very effective network security solution that basically protects our infrastructure, identifies any infections or any network security threats that actually may happen within our environment. We also are able to manage our users in terms of bandwidth usage and the allocation of bandwidth, whereby we give our users restricted access for use during working hours and they are supposed to utilize the bandwidth and make sure that we optimize and prioritize the applications able to get the necessary bandwidth. We do use it to manage our bandwidth. We do use it as well to make sure that our environment is secure against any possible threats.

In terms of the Sophos XG Firewall, what really excites us is basically the issue of intrusion detection and the intrusion prevention features. Those are both very, very good. 

The issue of sandboxing as well is something that is very useful. It's able to protect our environment quite well. 

Email protection is something that we are basically using all the time and it protects our environment which has more than 2000 users. 

All of the protection features are great in terms of securing our environment.

Sophos is way ahead of a number of other products in terms of the enhancements and upgrades they offer.

Sophos offers a great centralized dashboard that makes it easy to see what's happening on your network. 

The initial setup is very straightforward and the solution is extremely user-friendly.

The documentation is very, very good.

In terms of the product, from the way that we have been utilizing it, we have noticed that the vendor has been able to continuously upgrade and upgrade and update the product with new features. You'd find that all the time a new release has come out, and we're actually happy with that. We don't find it inconvenient that we are constantly upgrading. 

I can't think of any downsides in terms of the features on offer.

I'd like the dashboard to be improved. It could be a bit more customizable. 

I have about five years of experience with the product.

We are very satisfied with the functionality. We are very satisfied with the way that it is securing our environment. The stability has been excellent.

We have 2,000 users on the solution currently.

The solution is very scalable. We basically started with about 900 users. We went up to about 1,300. As we went up, as our users increased, we also scaled it up in terms of protection. Sophos was able to scale up easily and protect all our end users as well as our environment. It's been great overall.

We do plan to increase usage. Our employee base is about 10,000. We have 2,000 networked employees and we are planning to add another 1,000 users by the end of the year.

The technical support has been great. All of our technical staff have been certified as Sophos administrators. They were able to offer us the training to make sure that all of the support staff are familiar with the functionality of the product. Then, in terms of technical support that we may need, when we call the Sophos team, they are usually very available and they are even able to support us remotely if there is a need to do that. We are extremely satisfied overall.

I also often work with Cisco's ASA Firewall as well as Nagios. We bought Sophos to complement the ASA firewall.

The initial setup was very, very straightforward. You find that we did not even require a lot of external help from the vendor. It's so straightforward. The documentation is quite comprehensive and it takes the user through a step-by-step process, It's very user-friendly.

For the firewall as well as deployment of the end-user, the email protection as well as the sandbox, and the like, it took us approximately three days to finalize everything for our entire environment. We had over a hundred network sites, which are dotted through the city of Harare, therefore, we knew that we had to make sure that deployment was done fully throughout the entire environment.

There was very minimal, minimal assistance from the vendor. The vendor, here and there, would assist if we requested their help. However, you'd find that in most of the installations we did in-house, we didn't need the vendor to do anything. We knew that the installation process was very user-friendly.

The cost of procuring this product is very reasonable and it's very affordable for most organizations.

We're a customer and an end-user.

We use the latest version of the product.

I'd advise those considering the solution that Sophos' security solution is highly synchronized, very secure, and provides comprehensive security. I'd like them to know that it has enhanced and very detailed and sophisticated functionality, which is really easy to use, easy to deploy, and very user-friendly. It is a product that I would highly recommend for any organization that needs to comprehensively secure its infrastructure.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.