What needs improvement with Sophos XG?

The firewall could be made more robust, particularly by simplifying two-factor authentication. It should also improve SD WAN capabilities. Additionally, there are issues with site-to-site VPNs dropping connections, which can be frustrating.

The areas needing improvement are support and configuration. The delays in technical support can be handled better. Sometimes, configuration gives some issues.

One area of improvement is the lack of cross-cluster capability, meaning you need different sets of tasks and pipelines for each Kubernetes cluster. Tekton also has an unstable API with frequent changes, making it challenging to maintain consistency across versions. Additionally, there's a need for a better dashboard and built-in authentication mechanisms.

One drawback I've noticed with Sophos XG is that sometimes, the platform can become unresponsive. I've observed that it occasionally hangs, causing traffic to get stuck. During these times, users cannot access the internet or any services routed through the Sophos Firewall. This issue happens randomly and isn't something we've encountered with other firewalls like FortiGate, which we used in the past. Dealing with licensing has been a big challenge for us. Despite our efforts to resolve issues through our sales contact, we've faced limitations. After confirming our purchase orders, we had to escalate the issue. We were ready to extend our licenses for two or three months.

The support service offered by Sophos is an area of concern where certain improvements are required. My company did not get enough support when, in our enterprise, we faced some issues with the product and needed support. For support, one has to go with the online community, and even then, it cannot be guaranteed that one will get the right support. The support team's response time should be minimized. The support should be more available. I think that one has to wait for four or five days to get support. Business cannot stop just because of issues with support. The tool's renewal service was really good and straightforward. Some of the working features of the product, like sandboxing functionalities, are complex for me to handle, especially since one has to buy them separately. You have to buy sandboxing features separately, but I believe that it needs to be given to a user along with the product. In my company, we couldn't find the detection features of the product. Though I did a remote code execution, and it stopped abruptly, it never showed where it actually stopped. In the area of reporting, there needs to be a lot of improvement in the tool. Partner engagement is an area in which I feel there should be some improvements. Getting support or being able to deal with certain stuff when it comes to Sophos because of the OEM should be made possible. When an OEM is with you, you'll feel more comfortable doing business. My company started doing Fortinet a few days ago, but before that, we had Sophos. My company is moving away from Sophos because it is no longer needed. When it comes to the price or during some disconnection, my company doesn't get any support from Sophos.

We are facing a little bit of an issue with the product's web filtering capabilities. It must be improved. SD-WAN can be improved.

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

One area where Sophos XG could improve is in its patch management system. I encountered an issue where installing a new patch resulted in being locked out of the firewall, which was quite inconvenient. This suggests a vulnerability that needs addressing to ensure administrators can update patches without losing access. Such incidents shouldn't require a complete reconfiguration, so there is definitely room for improvement in this aspect. One piece of advice I would offer is for Sophos XG to consistently incorporate the latest technologies to stay competitive with other vendors. Ensuring that new features are regularly updated and integrated into future products will enhance the platform's effectiveness and appeal to users.

I've had experience with Sophos XG's threat intelligence features, and they provide good coverage, although I wouldn't say they're the best in the industry. The sandbox feature is available with top-tier subscriptions, allowing you to test content in a cloud sandbox. One improvement I'd suggest for Sophos XG is to make certain functionalities, like CR functionality, part of the default firewalling rather than exclusive to premium subscriptions. Enhancing DLP capabilities at the gateway level could significantly boost security for organizations.

I want an increase in the ability of the product to block and delete the websites and applications that don't work fine for our company. The tool ends up blocking another website that I need when I only want it to block a particular website or application. I can't use the product's application control feature, making it a disadvantage of the solution where improvements are required.

In Sophos XG, the throughput for larger networks is an area of concern where improvements are required. I hope the product comes up with some better prices and offers for the tools provided to academic institutions.

I would like the product to improve so that it can provide advanced SD-WAN, which can allow users to deal with infinite connections along with seamless bandwidth utilization. In the product, the area revolving around SD-WAN has certain shortcomings where improvements are required. It would be great if I could monitor a particular traffic from a network with Sophos XG.

I encountered an issue while implementing web filtering for users. Specifically, when attempting to access reports detailing which sites users are visiting, the diagnostic report fails to display the complete URLs of the websites visited. This becomes particularly problematic when users utilize proxy software to bypass the firewall, as it renders tracking their website visits nearly impossible. Training presents a major challenge as there are numerous features available, such as IPS and IDS, which many network administrators are unfamiliar with and tend to leave disabled. Users are unable to enable these features themselves due to their lack of understanding of their functionalities and configuration processes. The training manual provided to users lacks proper guidance on configuration procedures. The content outlined in the user manual differs significantly from the live configuration process.

The time taken by Sophos XG's support team to respond to and resolve an issue is an area of concern where improvements are required.

While Sophos XG has been reliable for remote troubleshooting sessions, it would be beneficial if the platform provided more flexible support for a variety of devices. The user interface is intuitive for those familiar with it, but improving accessibility and user guidance could be beneficial for newcomers. Additionally, although the features are comprehensive, fair pricing and more flexibility with device compatibility could make it even more appealing in the market.

The reporting to user level could be improved by using with less steps

The product's technical support services could be better.

The support from the vendor needs to be improved.

The BGP engine is very limited.

There is no built-in option for let's encrypt certificate management for use with webadmin, user portal and WAF.

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.

There should be web caching to improve bandwidth utilization. It should have a very good caching feature. That's because we are in a very poor continent, and the connectivity cost is very high. We have low bandwidth, and the intensive usage of bandwidth is not easy here in Africa. If they improve services for web caching, it would be better. It should also support a feature for Virtual Domains. Similar to FortiGate, we should be able to use a single device to create two or more virtual units. Such a feature is useful for separating the traffic between departments in a large enterprise. When I try to use Sophos for Email Gateway, it's not easy to check a user in the LDAP directory. It's not as good as other products, such as HCL Domino. Sophos is good, but it is not so good. When we use the LDAP filter to select some users, we have small problems, but overall, Sophos is very good for me. Their support in Africa is not so good, which is a problem. Their support can be improved.

Sophos XG could improve by coming out with more innovative feature developments. The solution is secure, but security could always be better, they should work on perfecting the security of Sophos XG.

We recently did an upgrade on the Sophos XG firmware and we were surprised that after the upgrade, the automatic switch actually we were using did not work anymore. We try to understand exactly why it wasn't working with the new 18.5 firmware, but we could not figure it out. I realized that I was stuck with the main ISP. If there's an outage, it was not reliable on the network any longer. We had to reverse, back to the old firmware even though we were still trying to fix the new version. It is a very efficient feature for our operation. If it was not there, it could make the workings of our operation inefficient. It is one of the best features of Sophos XG. It makes operations very efficient. You don't have to worry about anything at all. We are using the entire Sophos package, such as Sophos endpoint, Sophos XGR, Sophos ZGR. The documentation can improve with Sophos XG. This will allow our network engineer to work better with the solution. Additionally, they can improve the ability to filter down devices. Recently we were faced with a challenge where we needed to restrict mobile phone users on the network but we realized that we couldn't do this with the solution. Recently I was looking at the Cisco Meraki solution, to see what it can do in terms of capacity. There's one feature that stood out to me, and that feature has the ability to implement some policies. Organizations need to have security policies in place. I would like the ability to create policies.

In the Sophos XG, the SD-WAN has all the rules done separately, such as net policy routing. In the previous version, they were all in a single rule and everything was done that way. The way it is now is difficult for us because we are not used to this newer version. The firewall rules should be easier to configure and create. Everything should be done with a single click. In the next version, the solution would be more user-friendly overall.

Sophos XG could improve Data Loss Prevention(DLP).

The security of Sophos XG could be improved. Sophos wants to move all things to the cloud, including access to the end-user PCs and data from the cloud. What will be easier to hack for a customer with an outdated firewall, or the Sophos cloud could get hacked which has all the access and information from customers. With my experience, it's not a question of if they will hack it, but a question of when they will do it. I'm not happy with the direction Sophos is going on. We have problems with the use of the user interface. You have a poor search engine for objects via which you can write new rules. You have to start at the beginning of the whole object name. With the Sophos UTM, you can start with a pattern, with part of the whole word. In Sophos UTM it will list you all the hits with parts of what you type, and that does not happen on the Sophos XG.

Areas for improvement would be the access points and the on-premise version, which is very bad.

While it is possible to configure between two of the solution's devices in the same model, the high available usually fails. We are talking about when there are two devices running concurrently. When it comes to the traffic, there is a distribution of load balancing and the upworking. This is what is meant by high availability.

Support could be improved.

The reporting needs to be much better. Sometimes I have a lot of trouble understanding what they mean. Sometimes it misses websites. For example, websites the users shouldn't be able to enter, or sometimes these websites are not shown in this log viewer. It's just occasional misses here and there. Technical support could be more responsive and quicker in getting to a solution.

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

The only area that requires improvement is scalability. I understand why scalability is difficult in all firewalls. I understand why it is difficult in our firewalls. If you want to scale, you can scale vertically or horizontally. That is the world of scalability. However, you cannot do so for the firewall. It's a forklift, you have to buy a new appliance.

I'm just a sole proprietor for IT support, and from my perspective, there could be better ways to educate a proprietor, such as myself, on how to set it up, program it, and manage it. They do tend to have support, but a lot of times, it is for larger networks. I need something simpler and more rudimentary to set up and configure the firewall, set up the rules, and that type of thing. So, if there is a missing component there, that would be it. Any firewall will need rules for how it protects the network against a variety of threats or various degrees of protection. My comments are not aimed at Sophos specifically. As a new person just learning about firewall protection, it would be helpful for any vendor to have an education area that runs through various scenarios and implements them in the firewall. Videos would be helpful. From my initial research on which firewall to choose, Sophos appeared to have the most straightforward interface. I purchased the units from www.firewalls.com, and they worked with me to do the initial setup. That was very helpful to get started

The user interface could be better. We find that the solution takes too long to load. It's slow.

The solution could be more secure.

For the moment, managing the Sophos interface is a little bit challenging. We have an external partner that helps me to comprehend. But it's new. It has to keep up with the market, and I understand that. But that's my personal problem at the moment. High-availability clusters have not been implemented, so we have only one firewall and one device. So should this device go down, there's no more internet access. But so far, we haven't had any problems.

Its price should be improved. Its features are pretty okay, but the price is the area where we have to fight more. They should do something about the price structure.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few negatives with them. Their tech support is not great. The features on offer are lacking. Basically what they don't have is proper bandwidth management for multiple WAN ports and multiple WAN ports to multiple VPN WANs. Meaning, if I have it on both sides on both the main side and on the secondary side, two internet connections, I can't bond the two of them together into a single VPN and have bandwidth managed between the two of them. If I want to go ahead and make a VPN, right now, I have two internet connections on each side. I have to make a failover a group of four VPNs for it to go ahead and failover between them. You're getting into a lot of rules. It's a lot of extra rules, et cetera, that has to be done. They don't have simple pointing systems where you could go ahead and make rules saying, "Hey, here's the route". They're not fully route-based VPN rules yet. You literally have to take down all the routes all over the place in order to make updates. It's tedious. Basically, we had the problem where we moved certain ranges from one data center to another data center. It took us about an hour of downtime to do that. We had to go ahead and we had to reset VLANs and we had re-setup all the VPNs in all the different places we reconnected. We don't have two sites, we have 25 sites. It was a lot of work.

The solution is very slow in comparison with SonicWall and FortiGate. It should have faster performance. The installation could be faster and is longer than that of other solutions, lasting more than a month instead of five minutes.

Even though things work on the back end, we have encountered bugs in the solution. User interface and integration can stand improvement.

When upgrading the firewalls, the process could be easier. While we do have network control, we don't have network monitoring. If I have 200 nodes and I want to see what's happening, I don't have visibility, especially if people are working remotely. If we could control roaming users through the firewalls and make it so that it's more of a complete security solution, which we prefer, that would be ideal. If we have to install some clients on these machines, that's fine. The only concern is the DLP. We want to protect our data from being stolen. We'd also like to monitor activities from the perspective of productivity. We want to be able to track and calculate what users are doing on their machines.

I'd like to see a more simplified functionality for our customers. We also had a negative experience with the sales team of Sophos, which offered a three-year renewal to our customer. We'd suggested one year, keeping the customer's cashflow in mind and Covid. The result was that it affected our credibility with the customer. These are some of the irritants in the sales policy.

The logging side of it could definitely be better. Some of the logging lacks, and the information that they provide you, especially in the spam filtering section, could be better.

I wish to see an antivirus feature added to the solution.

The box needs to be fixed Moreover,the bugs need fixing. I also think that SD-WAN features should be added. The intelligence feature should be improved and Sophos needs upgrading and updating.

We are in the movie industry. We're a movie distribution company. Currently, we are affected badly by corona, since March of 2020. We are working from home, however, this solution is for on-premises tasks. The pricing can be high unless you choose a longer contract.

Their support is fairly good, and they come back to me. I've had an issue once or twice where I couldn't understand what the support person was saying because those calls were probably routed to India. They were a bit difficult to understand, but it is generally not an issue.

It is already secure but it could be better in terms of other breaches that may occur.

Technical support can be slow to respond, which is something that should be improved. In the future, I would like to see the addition of artificial intelligence for identifying and controlling traffic.

In feature releases of the solution, I would like there to be an increase in the detection capability. The detection is low compared to the other solution available in the market.

They need to do more quality checks before they release firmware upgrades. Currently, a few Cyberoam firewall customers are facing some issues while upgrading the Cyberoam firmware to Sophos. After the new firmware is installed, they are seeing some performance issues, which require some bug fixes. The performance is fine after getting the required support. Customers who are already using Sophos hardware are quite satisfied with this solution. Their support should also be improved. We are facing difficulties getting support on time through email or phone.

The technical support they offer is difficult to access. There is no direct number to call and when you do get hold of them and have confirmation, it takes a while to get a response.

The manuals or guides we are given are too simple. When we are implementing the product, it is difficult for us as we don't have more detailed information. The technical support on offer is slow. When I have questions, they answer me very slowly. Sometimes within 24 hours, I have a response. However, it can be longer. In Mexico, Sophos doesn't have technical support locally. It's in Argentina or in other countries. It would be nice if support was available in the country.

I would like to see in future releases a tool to scan for malicious packets and give the location of where they are coming from. Nowadays all over the world is suffering from ransomware threats. If they could map where those packets are coming from and make the packet monitoring more efficient it will be helpful to prevent more of these kinds of threats.

Its user interface is a little bit slow.

The GUI and support could be better. I think there are other products that we are going to deploy instead of Sophos. We have already upgraded a month ago because the interfaces and support for Sophos are really weak. But other products like Juniper, Cisco, or FortiGate are better than Sophos. It's also complicated, and the end-user or client does not understand it. The interfaces and the GUI design are not easy, and when you do something, unrelated things are in the same configuration site. There are different sites to visit to configure Sophos. This is even more than other products. Many features can be improved, especially the VPN and web filtering features.

Data traffic analysis could be better. I think Fortinet products like FortiAnalyzer are very effective in analyzing data traffic. I think it's better than Sophos. It could also be more stable.

Recently, I've had a problem with updating firmware. Updates should be more stable . The last update I did was not successful and ended in a unusable device. Also the support case i opened for it could have been more effective. I don't use all of the features and therefore it would be difficult to evaluate if anything is missing.

I would like to explore network access control. I haven't seen that it is clearly deployed. It might be something that is already in place, or if it is available on another device. I would want the level of integration to have another device on your network that is also reliable.

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.

The integration could be a bit better. They need to allow their solution to integrate with other products and not just other Sophos solutions. Sophos has a feature that in my opinion is very limited. They don't have enough VPNs on their models. They have the XG 750, which is a sizeable appliance. On those models, they used to have not enough VPNs. They always were short on that area. Pricing used to be very bad, however, they've adjusted their strategy recently. The product needs to improve its marketing in Mexico. It's not a well-recognized product in our country. The solution's technical support is very bad. There is an overall lack of documentation in relation to features and capabilities. We need these to help explain aspects of the solution to our clients.

Technical support could be improved. They aren't as responsive as they could be. It would be ideal if we could have a more populated and detailed knowledge base. Generally, the new features must be tested before applying them to the production side. I would like to see more case studies, more application notes, and so on. We would like to see an improvement in mail management. When passing from FG Series to XG Series, some mail features have been lost. We would like to regain them.

I don't see any drawbacks to this solution at the moment. I know of other products that have more features and are more advanced stages, but ultimately, an organization's choice of software depends on its budget. If you have a small amount of money and you want to secure your network, Sophos XG can provide you with network security. Sophos ZG is a mid-range solution. There are solutions that are above it in terms of features on the market, but they cost more money. They could work on their technical support to make it more productive for the end customer. Some of my friends and colleagues have had unfavorable experiences with the tech support taking too long to close their ticket. However, I opened two cases this week and both have been resolved.

They can improve all indicators, all KPIs, all the scores, the consoles, and the monitors. These are all areas that need improvement. These areas need to be more clear for the customers. You have to have good experience working with Sophos to know how to get to the forums and to get to the information that you want from the beginning. It is complicated to get the reports if you are not experienced with Sophos. For example, if you want to get a report on what the firewall is doing, you have to be a very experienced engineer.

Their updates can be faster and more regular. Right now, it's updated monthly. When I need to update the firmware, I want it done within weeks, not months. There are also some changes in version 18, like rules, that aren't needed.

They made some changes to the firmware update sometime last year, which moved some of the policies from where they were before. Some of the policies, such as NAS policies, were separated, which made it a bit hard for people to trace the policies they had configured.

The solution could be improved if it offered more documentation or at least provided more information about the products themselves. If there was a virtual assistant of some kind that would help clients familiarize themselves with everything, that would be very helpful. It would be helpful to get some insights into new features so that we are able to relay information to clients effectively.

They can simplify its interface so that it is mostly drag-and-drop. There was an SQL injection attack on some Sophos devices. They just need to harden their devices a little bit so that they can't be hacked very easily.

There are issues with electricity with this solution.

I used to work with Fortinet, and sometimes I see that the SD-WAN feature could be better because it's much easier in Fortinet. That area could be improved in Sophos XG as it's too complicated right now. For example, I remember a case where the routers had to be configured by commands. It's not hard, but you have to read and investigate how to do that. The XG firewall works fine, but you have to read, and it takes some time to do it. Sophos XG could also improve the floating area. I have more features in Fortinet, more visibility of the networking table, and the networking area. But in Sophos, you have to enter the CLA and display it. It'll also help if they offered more toll booths for VPN like Fortinet.

When you utilize the processors, the device hangs. Many firewalls hang because of the high volume of loads. If we are using the HP policy and the user policy at the same time, the firewall gets hung and it means that we cannot get clear reports. We have mitigated the firewall with Palo Alto because Palo Alto is working on multiple environments. I would like to see the performance improved.

The MTR feature has to be enhanced. There are some bugs on the ADL which need enhancing.

I have not used their SD-WAN product or the SD-WAN feature, so I don't know how scalable the SD-WAN is. But, I hope just that the SD-WAN is up to par with FortiGate. The integration is an area that can improve a bit. One of the other solutions that I have used that is highly interoperable is Fortinet. It's easy to integrate with other products. Sophos can definitely improve with the interoperability between solutions.

They can lower its price. It is very expensive. We are looking for a less expensive solution depending on our budget. They can also improve it in terms of firewall protection.

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.

Software updates always come with issues. For example, I just upgraded to the next version, 80.5, and it came with VPN issues. It started dropping my VPN users. So, I had to roll back to before the software update. I think that the main area for improvement is the quality assurance of the updates. The management console is a little bit rigid. Scalability can be improved. I think that it performs a little bit slow when it comes to connectivity, and having the speed increased would be better.

I would like to have more artificial intelligence in the web monitoring service that comes with it. It should alert us when particular events happen. It has already got some of that. I know that it is more of a service, and Sophos is already looking at it. It is called SIEM.

An area of improvement would be the reporting as diagnostic graphs take a long time to load and refresh. If there could be an option to show only select graphs, it may speed up the graphics. Most of the time we don't use the disk usage, memory or CPU graphs. The main graph we watch is the bandwidth usage. Additionally, their previous update contained many bugs. They need to ensure that, before releasing a new version, there are not so many bugs.

The first area that needs to be improved is customer support. If I'm implementing a connection on the DMZ or WAN, I should be able to dive deep into the implementation, specifying what needs to be implemented or not. For example, I should be able to configure specific details for the DMZ, and not have to follow the templates that they provide. We have had problems with the stability that affected business operations.

It's a problem that we are not able to investigate incidents, there is no tracking. Security is also lacking in this product.

Categorization or uncategorized websites is an area that needs improvement. Having a web portal where you could make requests for the categorization of non-categorized items, would be beneficial. The DLP rules don't cover countries such as Serbia. You cannot make custom rules. That could be added so that we could detect content that is not supposed to leave the company via email, and so that the rules could be customized by the clients. We only have predefined rules and most of them are not for Serbia or countries from the Region.

In the Firewall, the Intrusion Prevention System can be improved. Now because COVID has come to stay, people tend to work from home, and cybersecurity has been on the high side. It can improve more on the security aspect of this so that it can combat any major threat or common bug. I am not saying that the security has become compromised, as it is usually active, but they can improve on it. Local and technical support can be improved. When firmware updates are complete, there were issues with connectivity and VPN users. Recently, I stopped updating the firmware because I didn't want to obstruct the connectivity of the staff working remotely at different locations. I have stopped doing any updates until the issue can be addressed.

I need to do a bit more research on the product. I can't think of any features that are missing. The solution is tied to the US dollar. You need to pay whatever the equivalent is in your own currency, and, if the exchange is bad, it can really add to the cost.

The number of ports, especially on the entry-level appliances, should be increased. The price of adding ports should be reduced to make it more competitive. The vendor needs to create materials to show the differences between Sophos products and those from other vendors. Network management needs to be included in the package. As it is now, it only supports ten multiple users, which is something that should be increased.

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.

The security of the solution could be improved by making it more intuitive and it should have a background reputation service for classification of websites for content filtering. It's a service which defines the type of websites enabling me to do my content filtering in a much more effective and efficient way. They really need to include some kind of a client app for mobiles so that firewalls and all the metrics can be accessed directly on the phone; some kind of administrative application on the phone, maybe on an iOS or Android.

With the proliferation of fiber connectivity becoming available at our homes, consumers should not have to go and buy another module for fiber to ethernet converters or another device to get the fiber options. I understand all UTM models should have direct SFP ports available so that FFTH is directly terminated to UTM for better management and uptime.

The UI needs improvement because it can be a little weird at times.

In terms of improvement, one of the features we are having a hard time getting a hang of is MAC addressing, like when we assign IP addresses to a specific MAC address. That is something that can be improved. For the next release, I think, it should have better feature integration.

Some features are not available on the graphical interface. So you need to return to the command line to solve some issues that are faced by the customer. I used it for enterprise networks, I decided that it is not very good for enterprise networks. There is some issue with its hardware. I have faced two problems and that were resolved by Sophos earlier. They changed the appliance. In other products, I have not seen such problems in the hardware. So I think that the hardware is not heavy duty. You can say it's not heavy duty like other vendors. The performance is not as it says on the datasheet. They should improve the hardware. If they can do that, it would be a very good product.

It is a very basic and entry-level firewall. It doesn't give very granular control over the traffic. It should have more granular control over the traffic. This feature should be there similar to Palo Alto and Cisco. It should have such advanced features.

Sophos needs improvements made to the console, such as host entry or defining rules directly from it.

We are having challenges with social media because ever since this issue of COVID-19 came into existence, the idea of using online discussions has become relevant. Before this, they were not made the priority because they were not considered to be important. Now, we've discovered that we need to use a lot of these online applications. We are having challenges when using Zoom with Sophos XG deployed. Our wireless network is not stable through the connection. More work needs to be done there, since the FW is doubling up as a wireless controller. I would like to see improvements made to the display and visibility. I'm also using Sophos XG firewall as our wireless controller, but as it is now, I can't see my access points on the firewall. My wish is to see the Wireless network and reports also on this firewall cum- controller.

We feel that the GUI can be improved a bit because it has a lot of information and looks a bit outdated. Nowadays, you hear a lot about next-generation firewalls, so some additional features can be added from an EI perspective. Products like FortiGate, for example, have a lot of features apart from the basic firewall. We would like to see integration with existing IPAM and IDAM products. In the future, I would like to see new kinds of automations, as well as the inclusion of artificial intelligence-related features. A lot of other firewalls already have these now.

In regards to email as an example, if you experience any malware, it is contained in the container but doesn't give you any information about the email, or what is contained in the email. You only have the option to reject it or to release it. I need to open the email to see what it contains and the value of it before I know whether to access it or not. Stability needs improvements.

Training on the devices is an area that needs improvement. Their training mechanisms are not perfect, and this is where you lose a good appreciation of the product. The documentation for implementation is not good. For example, when you look up the details on a firewall rule to validate it, the details are not there. If you click on the help file, they say a zone is an area where you can define specific logical network areas. This is where they stop, with nothing more. If you want to go further into the concept of it, which you know there is, you have nothing. Then you have to revert to the internet and go onto newsgroups to try to see if anybody has had your type of experience. Then you find someone, they explain it to you then say, "Oh, it only makes sense". So, then when you want to implement this, it's much easier at that time. So, that's the best-case scenario that I can explain. There is an area that is very specific to our setup, where working tools you cannot easily establish a VPN between two internal networks. When you want to establish a VPN with different wizards, they assume that you're always going through your internet link. If you want to create, with the zero-trust concept, which is where you don't trust anybody or any device, you want to make sure that everything on your network is segmented and everything is relative, depending on its flexibility, behind its firewall or a firewall segment. At some points, you might want to establish VPNs between certain network segments. Since you cannot establish VPN tunnels from the Sophos interfaces, plus if you are doing something that's going through the internet, then you lose flexibility. Currently, let's say we have a factory V-LAN and you don't want anybody within the factory V-LAN to be able to connect to another unless it is to a specific V-LAN, and you want to use VPN technology, you can't do it because you can't establish the connection again between two internal interfaces.

When you are using it as a controller for the wireless access points, it doesn't perform well. It is not suitable for the public cloud. It is more suitable for enterprise data. It is not really the equipment for cloud data centers. I am looking for a data center firewall.

The behavior with the zones was a little bit tricky to understand and the beginning of the project. Sophos XG is difficult to manage and it is difficult to understand when you first begin. The reaction time of the GUI is terrible when compared to other manufacturers.

The VPN is in need of improvement. For us, it is hard to set up and it not working properly.

The solution really needs some additional features like network access control. If they could incorporate some user profiling and present the analytics of the login user usage patterns, or a typical proper management dashboard to take a decision on the firewall rules, that would be useful. Basically, MI's and the dashboard could be more user friendly. The information is there but the dashboards are not in a graphical format. In short, I'd like to see network access control, user profiling and analytics dashboards. It would make the solution a more competitive product on the market.

The two main areas where this product needs improvement are routing and reporting. The security can be improved, as well.

The uploading and downloading of reports should be included. We are looking for a firewall to block the uploads from the user, not the downloads. I would like to see this feature updated. In the next release, I would like the uploading and downloading reports to be included.

The interface could be improved by simplifying it and making it much smarter. I would also like to see an improvement in the diagnostic system graphs. They could be modified to provide individual graphs. The present page has all graphs in a single page and it slows things down and takes more time to refresh and load. Additional features they could consider including in any update would be symbols and tools. They could also include URL groups and all Office updates, the regular things that people do on a daily basis.

It would be helpful if they had a set of standard templates because it would assist in the beginning, when you are just getting started. They do have a template, but I mean specifically for different use cases. For example, an existing template for setting up a web page would suggest what kind of security we need to have in place. They do have help menus and videos, but additional templates would be useful.

The main area that needs improvement is the documentation. Sophos needs to be a little better at communicating with partners about changes, issues, patches, and so forth. The weakest point is the technical support because they are difficult to get into contact with.

The cloud support needs to be improved. As it is, they only have support for Microsoft Azure. They should expand it to include providers like Amazon and Alibaba.

Their technical support needs improvement. I've been on hold with them for hours waiting for their support.

It would be great if the user can have a portal to check on activities related to their account.

Network security is in need of improvement.

There needs to be a way that we can distinguish between educational institutions on Youtube and other Youtube videos. You can do this on Fortinet. Basically, they can block all other Youtube videos besides those that are from educational institutions. With Sophos, you either allow for all Youtube videos or none at all. They need to allow for more specification on different websites. They only have one single location for training videos. They must offer them elsewhere as well. When the site goes down, everything stops, and you can't access the videos when you need them, so they need to diversify that. It's limiting.

They should expand their DDoS feature. It's basic. They need to enhance it. Technical support needs to be improved. The solution needs a mobile application for the administrator. Today, as an administrator, you cannot manage the solution from your tablet or from your mobile. You can only go through a web console. Other vendors have mobile apps. Some vendors also have the ability to manage and check the chart report and change some settings from a mobile application. This would be an excellent add-on for administrators who are traveling. It could help a lot.

Although I enjoy the reporting elements of the solution, it can still be improved. I still can't drill down. There is some information that I would really, really like to see, but I still can't access it. On reports, they sometimes give a summary, but it lists different users as unknown. There are times that I really want to know which user or which IP is causing a problem.

Sometimes we experience difficulties with our server and that is usually due to a bug. Somehow bugs seem to find their way through Sophos' security. The issue is usually resolved when we contact technical support. In the next version, I would like to see an improvement in this. The developers should test everything after any update to ensure that bugs don't come though with the update.

The UTM itself needs improvement. When you're navigating it seems like it takes forever to load anything. The hardware is okay. It's just the software that could be more responsive.

It's easy to use, but it's harder to configure when you want detailed settings. They need to make it easier to access advanced features.

The initial set up process can be a little tricky, especially when you are registering with Sophos and you have a poor internet connection. Setup is not necessarily complex, but it's not trouble-free. You do have connectivity issues at the initial setup with registering the device on the Sophos platform to access the advanced features. It doesn't always go through the first time around. That may be an issue with the quality of our connection. I'm not sure exactly what it is. The single sign-on client I get maybe a 60% success rate on. There are times when it will use single sign-on for verification of users to access Internet resources. It still doesn't always catch the user. The user gets sent to the web login. Even though the single sign-on is helping, it doesn't always work. I would like to see a better single sign-on performance. I'd like to see a more streamlined way of managing your licensing as well.

I would like to have remote access to clients using a static IP for a certain period of time. This would allow me to log in to any client, remotely, with a known and fixed IP address.

There was a big issue with the Cyberoam and with the SG units as well, i.e. the previous Sophos UTM model. With Sophos XG, you get the chance to block what sites operate on SSL or that operate with HTTPS, without the need of extracting and distributing a certificate. On older Cyberoam and Sophos SG old versions, if you wanted to block something like YouTube or Facebook or any other websites that operate with HTTPS, you had to extract the certificate. Then you had to export that certificate. Then you had to re-import that certificate in all the user browsers. The only problem was if you needed to use an active directory where those certificates would be automatically thrown into the user browsers once they logged in to the domain. For a scenario like mine where you don't have a group policy, it is a disaster and ends up with you setting the rules to block certain websites with HTTPS on the firewall, even while they are not being blocked so that the user will still have access to them. This problem is now 100% sorted out with Sophos XG. Now you can actually block whatever you want, whether it's using HTTPS or HTTP keys from the firewall without the need for extracting certificates. That's a major improvement. That problem with the HTTPS settings was a huge issue. I know other people must be enjoying that it's sorted out now. It was a serious and major issue for Sophos. The only issue that Sophos XG now needs to improve is the product's reporting capabilities.

We are having a lot of issues with conflicts and user sessions, and Sophos has suggested that we change the device to the XG 400. Aside from these issues with scalability, the email security features are good, but there are not many options. We would like to know why an email is being blocked, and how we can allow delivery. It does not keep emails in the queue for delivery. It can only log whether it is delivered or not delivered. If I need more details then I have to log in using SSH to get that information. When an email comes in from the outside it is detected. When we check the log it only tells us that it is not delivered. We would like to create an exception, but there are not many options available for this. For example, a domain space is not allowed. Only the user name can be used to do that. We need a domain-based exception for email. Next, the XG 210 is easy to configure, but when we are looking for more details then we can only get this information through SSH. It is quite difficult. If we can get all of those details then it would help us to understand, so this needs to be improved. There are a lot of options and it gets confusing sometimes. If they can give limited options, with more information, then it would be good for the large sites.

The major problem that I am facing, and I know that others are facing as well, is with the HTTPS classic, in general, or any classic that works on Secure Socket Layers. Let's say I set up a rule to block users from accessing YouTube or Facebook. The rule will only block the HTTP traffic, which is non-secure traffic. But most websites right now, most of the reputable web services providers, for extra security for their own web servers and for the user's security, provide a connection over Secure Socket Layer. The problem comes when you are trying to block, or allow, similar traffic that uses HTTPS. You have to create a certificate and import it into the users' web browsers, whatever they are using. Now, this is not a problem when you're dealing with users stationed and fixed in a specific site or location. They are using desktops, they will never take the desktops and go home with them, nor will they ever take the desktops and travel to another country, or another site with it. The problem occurs when you're dealing with roaming users who use laptops and have to move between different sites that have different types of policies applied to them. You have to import all sorts of certificates from each site into their browser. Doing so will most probably conflict with something else that is totally irrelevant and cause a problem. A way around this is if you are using authentication with Active Directory. But most of the time, especially if you're operating in a remote site with a very slow internet connection, if it's available in the first place, authentication with Active Directory is impossible. So it needs an easier way to apply HTTPS filters, without importing certificates into users' browsers and without the need for using an Active Directory. There must be a way around it. There are workarounds. But with applied workarounds, it will work out once, it won't work out properly 10 other times. That is my only request. Also, since Sophos took over Cyberoam, the online technical library and support library have become super messy. To get a piece of information is becoming a nightmare. They need to reorganize the online technical support and technical library. The easiest way to overcome this is to look at how the Cyberoam online technical library was structured and to build the Sophos technical library the same way. It is messy, totally unorganized, time-wasting. Instead of getting what you want in five minutes it takes half an hour.