We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Sophos XG based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The customization potential is quite impressive."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"The base firewall features are quite valuable to us."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"It has the ability to create Palo Alto VM-series using software."
"The tool's cloud version makes application migration easy."
"The feature that I have found the most useful is that it meets all our requirements technically."
"I have not actually called their support line, because we have a direct contact to a senior engineer in the company for any issues that we handle with them. I will say they are very responsive, and they do give you the information you need when you need it."
"It scales linearly with load and no issues."
"It is an easy-to-scale product."
"In terms of security breaches, the product aids in categorizing and monitoring traffic, allowing for the identification of potentially malicisous or incorrectly formatted applications."
"In AWS, Palo Alto provides us a better view than flow logs for network traffic."
"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."
"Easy to deploy and user friendly."
"Overall the solution works well."
"The firewall provides network visibility and reporting capabilities, constantly improving over time. It can be integrated with the cloud console, allowing centralized management of multiple firewalls. integration with endpoint security products ensures seamless traffic flow and rule enforcement, even when endpoints are not directly connected to the firewall."
"The most valuable feature is web filtering."
"In my experience, the solution was easy to use, has lots of features, and is easy to configure."
"I've tried out Sophos XG a little. It has a good interface that's very user-friendly, but I haven't used all of its functions because I'm only configuring and running the system."
"We recommend Sophos XG as a priority as it is much more reliable and has efficient technical assistance."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution."
"It has to be more scalable for the deployment of VMs on the cloud."
"We feel that the setup was complex. So, we asked the tech team about the setup process. They explained how to deploy it in the right way, which made it very simple."
"The user interface could use some improvement."
"Recently, they introduced their Prisma Cloud solution. Compared to the previous technologies, like Panorama, which is used for centralized firewall management, or even the individual firewalls, it's a bit challenging to integrate the traditional firewall policies into Prisma Cloud."
"Just sometimes it can be a bit sluggish navigating through pages. That is just purely because of Java."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a complex product to work with."
"Its web interface is a bit outdated, and it needs to be updated. They can also improve the NAT functionality. We have had issues with the NAT setup."
"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."
"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."
"SD-WAN needs to be improved because it often fails at the network security level."
"The user interface could be better."
"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 interface of Sophos XG could be improved. I would prefer the Sophos XG to have an interface for the technician who is setting it up similar to the Sophos SG. I felt the Sophos SG user interface was superior. however, in terms of the functionality of the product, Sophos XG is in many ways more powerful than the Sophos SG. I have no complaints about the quality of the product or the end result. For someone who has used both, I preferred the old interface to the new one."
"Their technical support needs improvement. I've been on hold with them for hours waiting for their support."
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 11th in Firewalls with 53 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Sophos UTM. See our Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. Sophos XG report.
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