We performed a comparison between Check Point NGFW and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Check Point NGFW is praised for its extensive security features, centralized management, and virtualization capabilities. It is highly regarded in terms of comprehensive protection and adaptability. Sophos XG is known for its usability, user-friendly interface, and straightforward installation process. Both options provide robust threat defense and the ability to expand as needed.
Check Point NGFW, needs to improve various aspects, including integration with other infrastructures, hardware upgrades, cost and pricing, stability and security, UI, complexity issues, redundancy options, and memory management. Sophos XG needs improvements in antivirus features, graphical interface and performance, bandwidth management and VPN capabilities, reporting and user management, support and response time, and specific issues and feature requests.
Service and Support: Some customers have found Check Point NGFW's customer service to be helpful and responsive, while others believe there is room for improvement. Sophos XG's support has received both positive and negative feedback. Some customers have found it to be good and helpful, while others have been dissatisfied with unhelpful and unresponsive support.
Ease of Deployment: The initial setup for Check Point NGFW can range in difficulty, with some users finding it simple while others find it more challenging. Knowledge and experience may be required for certain configurations and migrations. The initial setup for Sophos XG is generally seen as uncomplicated and straightforward, although some users may struggle if they are unfamiliar with the product.
Pricing: Check Point NGFW is known for its high setup cost, particularly when compared to other products. Users find it challenging to add new licensing to existing devices, especially for larger enterprise-level devices. Sophos XG provides flexible pricing options based on the required functionality, offering reasonable and competitive pricing, particularly for educational institutions.
ROI: Check Point NGFW stands out for its cost savings, simplicity, and effective security enforcement. Sophos XG offers a high ROI by reducing support expenses and enhancing security practices.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG is the favored product when compared to Check Point NGFW. Users find the initial setup of Sophos XG to be simple. They appreciate the functionality and user interface of Sophos XG, as well as its extensive protection against threats. The pricing for Sophos XG is considered fair and the technical support is satisfactory.
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"The different hardware models focus on a wide spectrum of the market, so any company can choose a model that makes sense for them from the range."
"The solution is easy to administer thanks to its dashboards. The monitoring is really useful."
"In addition to the different security features that Check Point security solutions have, their integration with other technologies makes the security environment a complete security type."
"There is modern protection against current threats."
"The Next Generation Firewalls, the 64000 and 44000 series, provide us with support for large data centers and telco environments. They're quite reliable and provide great performance."
"The most valuable feature is the highly integrated NGFW features such as the IPS or Check Point Identity Awareness, which makes Check Point the best choice on the market."
"We found a very successful implementation of the virtual private network client, since, for some time now, everyone has been working from home."
"We have found the solution to be scalable."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XG are the ease of management and good out-of-the-box reporting."
"Sophos XG deployment is easy and rapid."
"The product is very easy to explore. It has a very good layout."
"The simplicity of the setup is the most valuable feature."
"All of the features are amazing, especially Sandstorm, which prevents bad traffic or downloaded files from reaching our customers' and partners' networks."
"The valuable features of this solution are the VPN, load balancer, and the QoS for splitting the ISP band."
"Dashboard is easy to use and the reporting offers a lot of detail."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XG for our use cases are its firewall capabilities, its ability to connect to wide area and local networks, and its VPN functionality."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"Check Point could improve the time for delivering requested features from customers."
"I would like to see better Data Leakage protection options and easier-to-understand deployment models for this."
"The support team should be faster."
"The Check Point support needs a lot of improvement."
"It's my understanding that the initial setup is a bit complex. There's a bit of a learning curve if you're trying to set it up for the first time and you aren't familiar with the product."
"For R80.10 and above, if you want to install a hotfix, then you can't install it through the GUI. I don't know why. In the earlier days, I was able to do the installation of hotfixes through the GUI. Now, Check Point said that you have to install hotfixes through the CLI. If that issue could be resolved, then it would be great because the GUI is more handy than the CLI."
"The firewall can improved to make it more user-friendly."
"Lacks some integration with other solutions."
"They need to improve the SD-WAN feature."
"The VPN device could be improved upon."
"When it comes to improvements that the vendor can make, we see that the cloud integration for managing all the firewalls is essentially a replacement of the on-prem version we had and is not sufficiently mature."
"The current bandwidth consumption is no longer shown in the XG and XGS."
"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."
"For the moment, managing the Sophos interface is a little bit challenging."
"When I call, I have to wait at least one to two hours to reach them."
"One feature I would like to add is remote wipeout capability. This would be useful in cases where a user leaves the organization and fails to return their laptop. Remote wipeout would allow for the deletion of data from the device with a single command. Regarding technical support from Sophos XG, it's generally satisfactory. However, the response time could be improved. It takes around one hour to receive assistance, but reducing this to 30-45 minutes would benefit us."
Check Point NGFW is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 278 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Check Point NGFW is rated 8.8, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Check Point NGFW writes "Good antivirus protection and URL filtering with very good user identification capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Check Point NGFW is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Azure Firewall and OPNsense, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Check Point NGFW vs. Sophos XG report.
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