We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The two solutions are very comparable. The only major difference between the two is that some users of Cisco Secure Firewall consider the deployment to be somewhat complex.
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"The product offers very good security."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"The solution is extremely reliable."
"We can easily track unauthorized users and see where traffic is going."
"It's the VPN side of things that has been most useful for us. It allows us to secure our users even when they're working from home. They are able to access all of our resources, no matter where they are in the world."
"For business purposes, it's a very detailed solution, which is it's greatest benefit, as you can get almost any piece of information you need from the solution. It allows for admins to be able to troubleshoot pretty easily."
"Everything is all documented in the file or in the command line script that gets uploaded to the device. It gives us great visibility."
"I have access to the web version of Cisco Talos to see the reputation of IP addresses. I find this very helpful. It provides important information for my company to obtain the reputation of IP addresses. The information in Talos is quite complete."
"It has definitely improved our organization. It gives us remote connectivity, helps workers connect remotely, and also gives us good connectivity to our other branches."
"It brings us the ability to work from anywhere and has allowed us to work remotely without having to incur a lot of other costs. If we didn't have this type of solution, since we have so many on-prem services that are required, we would have likely lost money and been unable to deliver. We have a video services team who helped build the content for our sporting events. When you are watching a Leaf game and those swipes come by as well as the clips and things, those are all generated in-house. Without the ability to access our on-premise resources, we would have been dead in the water. So, the return on that is pretty impressive."
"The remote access, VPN, and ACL features are valuable. We are using role-based access for individuals."
"Everything is consolidated into a single box, offering comprehensive functionality, including Wi-Fi access and other features."
"What I like about his program, is that it is easy to use and easy to manage."
"Sophos is easy to use."
"The valuable features of this solution are the VPN, load balancer, and the QoS for splitting the ISP band."
"The solution comes with a common bundle which comprises all the feature."
"The most valuable features are the central management, the user VPN, and communications."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XG are user-friendliness and it is highly secure."
"In terms of the functionality, I think it's pretty straightforward. It's easy to pick up. It's also user-friendly."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"Cisco wasn't first-to-market with NGFWs... they should look at what other vendors are doing and try not only to be on the same wavelength but a little bit better."
"There is huge scope for improvement in URL filtering. The database that they have is not accurate. Their content awareness and categorization for URL filtering are not that great. We faced many challenges with their categorization and content awareness. They should improve these categorization issues."
"Sometimes my customers say that Cisco Firewalls are a bit more difficult compared to Fortigate or Palo Alto. There is complexity in the configuration and the GUI could be improved."
"Cisco makes horrible UIs, so the interface is something that should be improved."
"They should improve their interface."
"I needed to be well-versed with all the command lines for Cisco ASA in order to fully utilize it. I missed this info and wasted some operational costs."
"I would like to see them release a patch for ASAv with cross-platform FirePower integration."
"We are looking for software taxi capabilities."
"Lacking network access control, user profiling and analytics dashboards."
"Technical support could be improved. They aren't as responsive as they could be."
"The initial set up process can be a little tricky, especially when you are registering with Sophos using your registration number. 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 automation. I'm not sure exactly what it is."
"Content filtering could be more effective and efficient."
"In feature releases of the solution, I would like there to be an increase in the detection capability."
"Inability to investigate incidents, there is no tracking."
"I would like to have remote access to clients using a static IP for a certain period of time."
"Sophos XG could improve by making the remote access and VPN better."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Check Point NGFW, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and SonicWall NSa. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos XG report.
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My preference is the Sophos XGS, particularly when you team it up with the Sophos Endpoint Protection client and configure it for synchronized security.
Both can be managed through Sophos Central and are available at a decent price for the power they offer the SMB.
I recommend Sophos XGS firewall. It will offer the best solution for malware protection.
Also, I recomend Sophos CIXA with XDR (Sophos Endpoint), so you can use Syncronized Security.