We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Sophos UTM 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."It's an easy solution to set up."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"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."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"The performance is good."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"The security on offer is very good."
"It is pretty important to have embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention, because all these different attacks and threats are constantly evolving. So, you want to have something beyond just hard pass rules. You want it to learn as it is going along. Its machine learning seems pretty good. It seems like it is catching quite a few things."
"I like the firewall's vulnerability management features, which give you reminders to update your system and update your OS."
"We have found the application control to be the most valuable feature. Also, Layer 7, because all other products are working up to the maximum capacity. But Palo Alto is benefiting us, especially in application control management. We are able to differentiate between Oracle traffic and SQL traffic."
"It is an extremely powerful solution as it provides visibility into all the network traffic, and offers a range of actions such as blocking websites or graphics, as well as load balancing. It's a great tool."
"I love the Policy Optimizer feature. I am also completely happy with its stability."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to deeply analyze the connection or connection type."
"It has the typical features of a next-generation firewall. It can do application control, antivirus, content filtering, etc."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls saves us time."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the firewall application and application control."
"We've found the technical support to be helpful."
"It allows me to easily connect with more than forty-five remote sites and more than fifty remote users between IPsec and SSL VPN, applying the web filter and application filter to ensure a secure connection."
"The initial configuration is straightforward thanks to the web GUI. In 30 minutes, you can have a running firewall with UTM protection enabled."
"Sophos UTM provides security for our network here and access through a VPN connection for our remote users. It also offers the flexibility to create different tools for accessibility."
"The cost of the solution is very reasonable."
"What I like about the solution is the ease of use."
"The most valuable feature is ransomware protection."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"Currently, FortiGate is providing SSL VPN. But they're missing some features that are available in Palo Alto's SSL VPN."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"The stability, scalability for enterprise-level organizations, and technical documentation have room for improvement."
"I'm thinking about a new feature. They have decryption. It's a good idea to use decryption on Palo Alto. It would be good if they had offloading of the traffic, and if they could decrypt the traffic and offload it. Like, for example, ASM on our site. We have an SSL decryption to offload the traffic. We could use that on Palo Alto."
"I like the reports, but I wish the reporting was a little better. When I set up the automatic reports to come in, they're pretty basic. I would like them to be a little more advanced at the ACC monitoring and things like that. I still enjoy all the daily alerts that I get and all the daily PDFs and reports, but I just feel that it could expand upon the visualization of the reports."
"The user interface is probably not as slick as it could be."
"Enhancements could potentially be made to the firmware to improve its inspectability."
"The pricing could be improved. They need to work on the setup over the firewall, VLAN, and PPPoE."
"The user interface is a bit clumsy and not very user-friendly."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"Email spam filtering only works if you have an on-prem Exchange server. It doesn't interface with Office 365 like the XG model. That would be one feature that they could improve. They're not going to do it because they're trying to push us all to XG."
"In Sophos UTM there is always a problem with the routing tables. If you want to see the routing table, you have to use the UI. You can't do it via a web browser. The routing table is better in Fortinet."
"The solution needs better integration with captive portals and XGs."
"Needs to improve the certificate management (ex. Let's Encrypt support)."
"The reporting could improve by providing information on where, or from which device attacks are coming from. We are already given the country where the attack is coming from but more information would be beneficial."
"They could use more SSL VPN support."
"We didn’t find any issues but I know there have been some in the last few years."
"The initial setup may be difficult for those not familiar with the product."
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Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. Sophos UTM report.
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