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."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 IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"The technical support for the solution is very good."
"The VM-Series reports how much bandwidth a particular IP is using. You don't need to regularly log into a website, like a Cisco command, to see what kind of ACL it's getting. There isn't an ACL use portal event. You can go there and see how much my ACL has been getting me."
"The filtering feature is good."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"It allows us to see all our traffic to properly secure it and only allow what is needed through the firewall."
"The most effective features of the solution for threat prevention are Layer 7 inspection, SSL decryption, IPS, and the web filtering profile."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the zero-trust security architecture."
"It is reliable and the support is very good."
"The initial setup is very straightforward and the solution is extremely user-friendly."
"The two most valuable feature of Sophos XG is, one the option to filter according to different applications and two, the integration with the Active Directory."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XG are user-friendliness and it is highly secure."
"Sophos XG is very useful, it does many things."
"Sophos offers great disk encryption, anti protection, and the interface is very user-friendly."
"The SL VPNs are the most valuable feature. I have a lot of systems out of the head office that need to connect to the local networks, and they all connect wirelessly via the Sophos VPN client."
"The antivirus features are valuable."
"Sophos XG protects our network from advanced threats."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"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."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"The interface is all Java-based. I would prefer an HTML5 interface."
"AWS doesn't integrate well with third-party firewalls."
"We have ran into issues with Palo Alto’s limitations for resolving large IP lists from DNS lookups, as well as the antivirus interfering with App-ID."
"It can definitely improve on the performance."
"At the beginning of the implementation, we had some difficulties with the scripts, but Palo Alto Networks support together with a local partner finally fixed it."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration of multi-factor authentication vendors."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a complex product to work with."
"I can't use the product's application control feature, making it a disadvantage of the solution where improvements are required."
"The installation could be faster and is longer than that of other solutions, lasting more than a month instead of five minutes."
"Technical support could be improved. They aren't as responsive as they could be."
"Having a web portal where you could make requests for the categorization of non-categorized items, would be beneficial."
"For the standard end user, self-based training is necessary. When you get into the Sophos XG firewall and try to start creating NAT rules, it can be a little cumbersome for a novice. It's pretty easy once you know how to do it, but it will be hard for anybody who doesn't have experience."
"Sometimes when you roll out a new firmware, you find that the rules you already have in place are broken, so it's difficult to migrate to a new firmware. That's the only downside I've experienced in Sophos."
"The number of ports, especially on the entry-level appliances, should be increased."
"The product's user interface has certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th 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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