Sophos XGS Reviews

For network security and filtering through our infrastructure, we rely on Sophos Firewall, specifically using Connect Sophos Cloud in our branches. 

Endpoint protection is crucial, so we integrate with DuoSet, and the system allows for VPN connections with various devices like SaaS, Alibaba, Fortinet, and Cisco, supporting encryption detection and more.

It's crucial for our company, as well as other companies and customers. When our customer licenses expire, they request to renew or make changes to their Sophos XGS boxes. This process is significant and managed by our technical team or engineers.

The Sophos XGS product is highly versatile and well-suited for various companies, including small, medium, and large enterprises. Its effectiveness lies in its inspection firewall capabilities, making it a commonly chosen option in our country due to its reasonable pricing. Sophos Firewall's support for VPN encryption and thorough inspection makes it a suitable choice for many companies, and I recommend it accordingly.

At the moment, I can't propose any new features. The primary concern is traffic stability, which needs improvement. Although the traffic stability is generally good, it has been noted that it can impact RAM and CPU, affecting workflow and inspection.

In my view, Sophos operates effectively in a reactive mode, focusing on static detection and forwarding traffic. However, Fortinet takes a more proactive approach, blocking both connection and route connections. While Sophos forwards any connection in both inbound and outbound traffic, I believe this is a positive aspect, especially in a country with various sizing considerations. This is my perspective, emphasizing the significance of Sophos XGS in software work.

I have been using Sophos XGS for two years. 

It's a stable solution. I would rate it around nine. There is room for improvement, especially in terms of support. As I mentioned earlier, when the CPU and memory reach their maximum capacity, the tool forwards traffic. This is a critical aspect—no inspection, no traffic, and no log.

It is a highly scalable solution. I can't provide an exact count because I work with multiple solutions, including Sophos XGS, Fortinet, and Palo Alto. Counting all the users across these platforms is challenging.

Positive

In the last two years, I have worked with Sophos Firewall, and it is an excellent firewall. It's easy to set up with encryption and inspection features. In my view, it's well-suited for all.

The initial setup of Sophos XGS has been quite smooth and user-friendly. Unlike my experience with Fortinet and Palo Alto, which posed challenges, Sophos XGS stands out for its ease of use. End users can handle the setup themselves without requiring an engineer to configure the firewall or register the device.

It's highly effective and well-suited for medium and small companies. The pricing is attractive, and our customers find it suitable for regular license renewals.

The prominent use cases for Sophos XGS depend on the type of customer. Local governments, schools, production companies, sales companies, and the finance sector use it.

It’s popular because it’s easy to manage, the cloud console is excellent, and it supports VPNs. It can also integrate with endpoints, though this is optional. Regarding threat intelligence, customers in Central Europe often prefer managing their threat hunting rather than using the more expensive service from Sophos. This feature is handy for large international companies with many employees. Threat intelligence requires separate licensing and is optional. Customers can either manage it themselves or purchase the additional service from Sophos, which includes further actions and is more expensive. Smaller companies often don’t have the budget for this.

One area for improvement would be including automatically generated certificates for HTTPS, which was available in earlier versions but might not be in the latest.

I’ve worked with Sophos XGS for over ten years, starting with Astaro and then Sophos.

Sophos XGS is not expensive and is scalable. It can fit small schools and companies with just ten employees, showing its flexibility for different sizes.

Sophos has two levels of support. The first level is qualified but may not handle complex issues well. I usually skip it and go straight to the second level for better results.

Positive

Deployment is quick and easy. Small installations take about three hours, and even remotely if necessary. It might take up to two days for more extensive infrastructures, including initial setup and follow-up checks.

Sophos XGS does use AI, particularly for sandboxing and analyzing suspicious documents in the cloud. It’s practical, as I haven’t had any major security breaches in the past five years.Overall, I’d rate Sophos XGS as nine out of ten. It has improved significantly over the years.

We typically use Sophos XGS for things like (UTM, acting as a proxy, managing routing, and for point-to-point connections.

The most valuable features of Sophos XGS for me are XGS IPS, SD-WAN, VPN setup, email protection, and integration with endpoint security.

Areas for improvement in Sophos XGS include better balance when handling high availability configurations, smoother firmware upgrades without the need for turning off devices, and simplified configuration after firmware updates.

In the next release of Sophos XGS, I would like to see improvements in log searching within the interface and more functionality available without needing to go to the command line, especially for troubleshooting purposes.

I have been working with Sophos XGS for five years.

Sophos XGS is stable and resilient, even in environments with power fluctuations and instability.

Scalability with Sophos XGS is generally good, but there can be frustrations with switches when setting up VPNs. I would rate the scalability as a four out of ten.

I believe the scalability of Sophos XGS can be improved, especially when compared to competitors like Palo Alto and Check Point. While it is a good product, there is room for enhancement to compete better in scalability challenges.

I would rate the technical support as a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Before Sophos XGS, I used Check Point, Palo Alto, and Cisco data solutions. I switched to Sophos because it is more affordable.

The initial setup of Sophos XGS is generally simple, especially for basic internet access with default features, but more complex configurations may have some difficulties. Overall, it is quick and stable.

It took less than an hour and a half to deploy Sophos XGS initially, including setting up internet access and basic firewall rules. However, migrating from older versions to the new setup took longer due to compatibility issues with the old settings.

Sophos XGS is quite affordable.

Overall, I would rate Sophos XGS as a seven out of ten. I would recommend it to others.

Sophos helps us set public restrictions and add category filtering to secure the network. It provides ATS and IPS scanning for further protection.

I like the Sophos UI. It interface has a more comfortable feel than the competitors.

I recommend Sophos increase the user capacity of the firewall by 1.5 times. For example, say the firewall can accommodate 1,000 users now, then it should handle a load of 1,500 users.

We've been using Sophos XGS for seven years.

Sophos is a stable product.

Sophos XGS is scalable. My company has almost 6,000 users.

We've contacted Sophos support multiple times for help troubleshooting.

We used a Cisco firewall for four years before Sophos. My company has multiple locations, and some had Sophos, but others used Cisco. After we had a good experience with Sophos, we moved the entire company to Sophos.

Installation is pretty straightforward compared to Juniper and Cisco products. The Sophos installation offers better guidance. 

We handled the installation and configuration with our in-house team.

Sophos isn't expensive. It's a mid-range solution that's cheap but not too much cheaper than competitors. It's a good price that meets all our compliance requirements. 

I rate Sophos XGS eight out of 10. 

We use Sophos XGS for web security and web policies, it's our primary solution. authentication VPN site to site, SSL VPNs installations. Sophos Firewall designed its extreme protection IT Rules and policies security level Authentication is good sometimes it's tricky and very helpful. Sophos Firewall delivers advanced threat protection to instantly identify bots and other advanced threats while defending your network from today's sophisticated attacks. current live user activities diagnostics to generate logs and objectionable site restrictions, daily reports are a great solution for the work environment.

With the increase in cybersecurity threats, this solution has helped us at an organizational level. We have always been hit by someone at the end of our desk or hidden somewhere ex:- spoofing attacks, a man in the middle attacks, and ransomware new era of cybersecurity pain full concept, Mail spoof attacks, all these have to improve DMZ and secure the firewall policies and server-client Antivirus solutions. Daily monitoring manually or trusted third-party vendors monitoring tools. finally, we are worried about how strong we are at the cybersecurity level.

This is a great solution for security, authentication, hashing, and encryption level. Sophos is good at ACL rules, Port forwarding, SDWAN route policies, IT Rules and policies as well as Natting rules. It's a reliable product to secure web securities. whenever we want we switch to the ports securely Heartbeat monitoring live user activities is great to execute on a production level. Bandwidth control sometimes referred to as traffic shaping is one of the best firewall features. Link aggregation and SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide Area Network) are great features for businesses that need multiple links to the internet. thank you

There are occasional issues when we update an operating firmware there's some lag time. Updating requires us to reboot the firewall, in this scenario 24/7 organization will be the most effective. In addition, I'd like to see more focus on customer support calls we were waiting for hours to connect with them. In some cases, Sophos's team is extraordinarily helpful to solve any issues in the firewall. Sophos needs to focus on customer support through a chatbot or call management quickly so we can find some help on the client side. Thank you

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is stable despite having to restart when we update. 

The solution is very scalable and we're able to handle all the pressure in our organization. We have over 100 VPNs and it all works well, Authentications, port forwarding, and all kind of security levels are much appreciated. 

Customer support needs to be improved. They're very helpful once you get them on the line but sometimes take up to an hour before we can speak to someone who can fix a problem. when a problem occurs at the production level we freeze and everything goes blank so a faster customer support call is much more appreciated.

Positive

The initial setup is complex. Sophos has some features like rules and policies, NATing, and PATing so deployment might take more time than if we were using an alternate solution. Deployment can take up to two weeks because every policy and VPN requires checking and that takes time. I've been working for the past 10+ years experience in network engineering and firewall configuration so we deployed in-house but we contacted Sophos for assistance when we needed it.

The Sophos or any kind of firewall is worthy to buy when we have dedicated servers and switches to implementation.

There are some very good features in this firewall and also some areas that need improving. I rate this product seven out of 10. 

I use Sophos XGS as an alternative gateway and we are using all the new generation firewall functionalities, such as EPS and antivirus.

We are using the WAF functionalities of Sophos XGS which has helped the organization.

Sophos XGS could improve by having a Network Access Control(NAC). This feature is a basic function in other firewalls and should be added, such as Palo Alto.

The SD-WAN functionality should be reviewed because there are some devices that don't work well. For example, in Palo Alto, the SD-WAN functionality is more efficient.

I have been using Sophos XGS for approximately four years.

Sophos XGS is a stable solution.

The technical support from Sophos XGS is good. We reach out to them if there is a serious problem. We have opened approximately four tickets with them.

I rate the support for Sophos XGS a two out of five.

I have used many other solutions, such as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cisco. Sophos XGS rates are at the bottom of the list compared to many solutions.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I would rate the initial setup of Sophos XGS three out of five.

We have a team of three or four people who administer Sophos XGS.

Once you pay for the Sophos XGS hardware there is no license required. There are additional costs if you want the support. We have purchased support for three years.

I rate Sophos XGS a six out of ten.

I am a cyber professional. I support customers with this solution. Sophos XGS is primarily a firewall. The product allows my customers to manage their internet access for their employees while protecting their environment from things like malware.

The solution requires one administrator as it does not require much maintenance. It depends on the usage and the environment. For example, in some account configurations, the environment has only four or five rules, other times there are over 100 rules. More rules will require more maintenance. 

The most valuable feature of Sophos XGS is the application control. I also enjoy the dashboard and reporting that it provides to my customers. 

Sophos helps my customers manage applications from accessing the internet, not only websites. We can ensure there is limited access to applications like Facebook. For example, Facebook is not accessible, but Facebook Messenger for chatting is. This prevents posting and sharing. We make restrictions without prevention.

Sophos XGS would benefit from further development in the SD-WAN area. It would be great if they could give technical people access to all the WAN links that we are connecting to, including inside the SD-WAN. 

They should make available or round robin inside the SD-WAN. This would allow us to move to another link if one goes down.

I have been using Sophos XGS for six years.

There have been issues with the stability of this product. Sometimes it requires restarting. We have looked into the client environment and this is not causing the instability. The problem is common.

Sophos XGS is not scalable. It is a hardware appliance and we should migrate the settings if we need to. In order for it to scale, you require additional hardware.

Sophos' technical support is responsive. There are times we need to push them to accelerate the process because there is a delay in replying. Sometimes, the first stage of first-line support does not have enough knowledge.

Overall, I would rate their technical support a three out of five.

Neutral

The initial setup of Sophos XGS is straightforward. I would rate it five out of five for ease of setup.

The cost of Sophos XGS is based on per unit, per appliance, and capacity. The capacity depends on the environment. Based on the size, we choose the model. The model selected dictates the pricing.

When comparing the pricing of Sophos to the competition, I give them a five out of five. It is competitively priced.

I have worked with Fortinet and WatchGuard. Other solutions have better performance and security value than Sophos XGS. 

Sophos has most of the features. If they don't have the features one year, they are added the next. At one point they did not have SGON, but now they do. It is not performing like Fortinet or Watch Guard, they need to do some enhancements. 

Sophos has the upper hand on reporting on the firewall itself. For small to medium-sized businesses Sophos is better than the competition.

If the organization is small or medium-sized I would recommend this solution. I would give it a nine out of 10 in this case. If the company is enterprise level, I would rate the solution a five out of 10.

Overall, I rate the Sophos XGS a seven out of 10.

We use Sophos XGS in 15 locations with 15 firewalls for the XG. We dedicate one person to maintain the solution.

The most valuable feature of Sophos is the VPN solution. I also value their threat management, IPS, IDS, and login features with single sign-on.

Sophos XGS needs improvement with the threshold values. Other solutions have the capacity to handle more users.

I would like to see virtualization security included in the next release.

We have been using Sophos XGS for more than two years.

Sophos XGS is stable as long as the capacity is not exceeded, then it becomes slow.

Scalability needs to be improved by increasing the threshold value. The bulk capacity can handle 300 users, if you have more users, it does not work well.

Technical support is okay. They are responsive but limited with knowledge and need to escalate to the upper levels. It takes time to resolve issues.

Positive

The initial setup of the solution was straightforward. It is easy to use and convenient.

The license for Sophos XGS is for three years, paid on a yearly basis. Everything is included with the license; there are no additional fees.

Sophos SGS is a nice solution. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.