Strong Security and Easy Management with Automated Threat Response
What do you like best about the product?
Strong security features, ease of management, and consistent recognition in industry rankings, It is especially valued for deep packet inspection, synchronized security, and automated threat response, making it a leading choice for enterprises and mid-sized organizations
What do you dislike about the product?
policy configuration less granular compared to its competitors
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Sophos addresses Cyber attacks with deep packet inspection and advanced threat protection.Sophos integrates with its endpoint security through Synchronized Security, automatically isolating compromised devices.
Simple cloud console and advanced protection with good integration with other Sophos tools
What do you like best about the product?
The best part is that they combine a cloud-based central console that is easy to manage, good integration with the rest of the Sophos security ecosystem, and an advanced level of protection (deep inspection, AI, secure VPN) without demanding significant internal IT resources. All of this at a reasonable price and with equipment that is easy to manage for SMB environments.
What do you dislike about the product?
Perhaps the performance of the teams against the hardware, the lack of very advanced features where other competitors are more powerful, and a somewhat slow and clunky management interface.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Simple security for SMB environments, integrating with other Sophos Cybersecurity solutions, allowing for an environment with XDR solutions that are easy to implement and manage.
Strong Admin Capabilities and Feature-Rich Sophos Firewall
What do you like best about the product?
Sophos firewall offers strong administrative capability, with easy implementation and plenty of useful features. It includes options such as ISP load balancing, a DHCP server, web filtering, and application filtering, among others.
What do you dislike about the product?
The licensing costs for some services should be included and built in.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use Sophos Firewalls in HA mode for a range of services, including inter-school connectivity via IPsec, web filtering, application filtering, and daily reports. We also rely on them for notifications and other related functions.
Robust UTM with Free SSL VPN and MFA Authentication
What do you like best about the product?
It offers UTM features, along with a free SSL VPN and MFA authentication.
What do you dislike about the product?
HA failover is not working properly. It is impacting production because the failover is failing.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SSL VPN with MFA, plus flawless UTM features. We use this firewall as our core firewall, and all of our internal servers sit behind it.
Cloud-Managed, But Lacking Modern Network Management Improvements
What do you like best about the product?
Sophos Firewalls has two major advantages: it’s a cloud-managed firewall, and it provides good customer-facing reports.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sophos firewalls haven’t changed much in terms of functionality in years. The configuration may come with a newer UI, but underneath it still feels like the same basic firewall.
What’s been most frustrating for me is that there still isn’t a straightforward way to manage VoIP—an extremely common part of any modern network—without having to drop into the CLI backend and disable VoIP inspection. It ends up being an all-or-nothing setting: either it’s on or it’s off.
I’ve run into a similar limitation with DHCP options. Yes, the feature exists and it has been added, but it’s still very basic and doesn’t really support more modern management approaches for other devices, like Unifi APs.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We initially deployed Sophos Firewall because we needed a way to manage firewalls in remote geographic locations where we couldn’t dispatch a technician. It also provided customer reports that met our clients’ requirements, which was an important part of why we chose it.
Centralized security management has simplified remote access and protected multiple branches
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Sophos Firewall is security purposes. I use Sophos Firewall to block unwanted URLs, unwanted categories, and for data loss prevention in my day-to-day work.
In addition to blocking unwanted URLs, we also use the VPN for remote access VPN and site-to-site VPN, blocking suspicious sites, and some unwanted categories such as pornography.
What is most valuable?
Sophos Firewall stands out to me because it is mainly easy to use, and its dashboard is very straightforward. The SD-WAN feature of Sophos Firewall is very good; via SD-WAN, we can route a particular user and access a particular site with a specific ISP.
The SD-WAN feature helps my organization by providing connectivity to my remote sites, as we have multiple branches, and we connect all my branches via SD-WAN VPN.
Sophos Firewall IPS and antivirus are very good, and we use that.
Sophos Firewall has positively impacted my organization by increasing security, reducing my time, and allowing us to manage multiple firewalls via Smart Console or Sophos Central, where we can push the policy centralized from all the firewalls.
Centralized policies have made management easier for me, and the error rate is relatively small.
What needs improvement?
I believe Sophos Firewall can be improved, especially inconsistency across the deployment, and some GUI can be slow.
In addition to UI speed, we need improvements in end-to-end deployment such as clear packet flow diagrams.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Sophos Firewall for 1.8 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Sophos Firewall is stable in our network.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Sophos Firewall scalability is good, with a wide hardware range suitable for SMBs to large user environments, cloud, and centralized management.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is really good; we always get resolutions on time.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Recently, we used Checkpoint as a different solution.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment; it has saved money, reduced staffing needs, and saved time. It is easy to use, and I can manage all my sites via Sophos Central.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing of Sophos Firewall is easy to manage.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Sophos Firewall, we evaluated options such as Fortinet and Palo Alto.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Sophos Firewall is to start simply from day one. With user concurrent sessions, we can achieve good security, which is very good in Sophos Firewall, and endpoint protection support is really good.
My additional thoughts are that Sophos Firewall policies are best suited for SMB and mid-sized networks, simple to moderately complex architectures, and high complexity multi-data center or automation-heavy environments, both delivering strong security.
Sophos Firewall in Education
What do you like best about the product?
Integrates with Sophos antivirus to provide a unified management console.
What do you dislike about the product?
Logs are only really viewable using a 3rd party tool
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We currently run two Sophos firewalls in an active/passive high-availability configuration. This setup automatically fails over between the two units if our internet service provider experiences an outage.
Robust protection has blocked external threats and provides clear visibility into user activity
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Sophos Firewall is blocking threats from outside. I use Sophos Firewall to block threats from outside by implementing a rule-based policy, where whenever traffic has to pass through the firewall, I create a rule, and based on that rule, I can easily perform the configuration that I want with the restriction.
With the help of Sophos Firewall, I can also have visibility on my users, see what they are doing and what they need to use, and apply those types of restrictions from Sophos Firewall.
What is most valuable?
Sophos Firewall offers multiple features, including IPS, IDS, ATP, NDR, XOps, web protection, application protection, web server protection, and many more. Out of all those features, I find web protection and application protection to be very helpful and valuable in my daily work.
Sophos Firewall has positively impacted my organization by preventing outside threats, allowing me to easily monitor my users, and configuring any rule for any user regarding what they need to use and what I am restricting for the particular user. I can share that it has improved productivity because if anyone could ransom my network, they could demand money to decrypt the files, thus saving us money, time, and providing reliability.
What needs improvement?
Sophos Firewall can be improved by providing more throughput. As of now, it is working well, but if there is a report facility for generating more detailed reports, such as brief reports, it would also be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Sophos Firewall for the last two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Sophos Firewall is stable as of now.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Sophos Firewall's scalability is good; if I want to migrate, it can easily be done with the help of the backup and restore feature.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support for Sophos is very good. I would rate the customer support a 10 out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Fortinet before switching to Sophos Firewall. I switched from Fortinet to Sophos Firewall because of the licenses and the user interface; Sophos Firewall's user interface is very user-friendly, and unlike Fortinet, which requires purchasing a VPN license separately, Sophos Firewall includes the VPN license for free.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment as it has saved our money and time, especially since Sophos Firewall can save money from outside attackers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Sophos Firewall is good; with the Xstream Protection bundle, I can get multiple features, including DNS protection, and the VPN licenses are free for Sophos Firewall, making it very favorable.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Sophos Firewall, I evaluated other options, including taking a demo for Palo Alto, but I found Palo Alto to be very high cost, so I did not switch to that.
What other advice do I have?
Sophos Firewall also includes a VPN feature with types of VPN setup that allows me to easily facilitate remote work. My advice to others looking into using Sophos Firewall is that I recommend it as it is easy to use, easy to deploy, and the licensing is not overly complicated, making it reliable. Sophos Firewall is very reliable, very user-friendly, and easy to use. I give this product a rating of 10 out of 10.
User Management in One Dashboard
What do you like best about the product?
It easy to use and confirtable to manage all network and user on one dashboard
What do you dislike about the product?
Firmware updates can sometimes cause unexpected issues, including stability problems, in some cases requiring re-configuration
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Uses Sophos Labs AI and machine learning to identify and stop zero-day exploits and malware, reducing the risk of data breaches.
Easy to Understand, User-Friendly, and Highly Secure Firewall
What do you like best about the product?
It is easy to understand and user-friendly. Most secured firewall.
What do you dislike about the product?
NAT rules automatically created when creating firewall rule.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
As of now many problems solved by firewall. Round-robin process is very benefit.
