We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks VM-Series 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."We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use."
"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"With FortiClient, you can easily connect when you are home, check out what you want to do, and connect to your network when you are not at work. You can switch on servers and you can check what is wrong."
"The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"It offers a single pane of glass for all the different types of installations."
"The feature that I have found the most useful is that it meets all our requirements technically."
"The product provides more visibility into our traffic."
"In the newer version, there are 3850s, all of them are scalable. They fit better into the medium or small businesses."
"I like the UI. Most things are accessible from the user interface and it is quite user-friendly. With respect to both VM-based firewalls and physical firewalls, it's easy to create updates."
"In terms of security breaches, the product aids in categorizing and monitoring traffic, allowing for the identification of potentially malicisous or incorrectly formatted applications."
"We have reduced the number of configuration lines by 90%. We need fewer number of admins right now because of it."
"The most valuable feature is the CLI."
"The cost of the solution is very reasonable."
"What I like about the solution is the ease of use."
"Brings greater visibility into the network traffic coming inside and passing away from the company."
"We've found the technical support to be helpful."
"It's a stable solution."
"Installing Sophos UTM is straightforward. The deployment itself doesn't take long, but you have to spend some time planning and waiting for the hardware to be delivered."
"It allows our developers to be able to securely log into servers to deploy and manage software."
"The stability of Sophos UTM is very good. The solution has been stable since Sophos took over Cyberoam which was the original company providing this solution."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"The support system could be improved."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"The product needs improvement in their Secure Access Service Edge."
"The command-line interface is something that some people struggle with and I think that they should have an option to go straight to the GUI."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series needs to improve its order process."
"It would be good if the common features work consistently in physical and virtual environments. There was an integration issue in the virtual deployment where it didn't report the interface counters, and we had to upgrade to the latest version, whereas the same thing has been working in the physical deployment for ages now. It seems that it was because of Azure. We were using VMware before, and we didn't have any such issues. We do see such small issues where we expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. There also seems to be a limitation on how to do high availability in a virtualized environment. All features should be consistently available in physical and virtual environments. It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto in the network management system. We would like to be able to compare two network management systems. They can maybe allow monitoring an interface through the GUI to create a reference or do a baseline check about whether your network monitoring system is actually giving you the correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures to be able to recognize the trends and plan the capacity."
"There are some delays that I have observed when my company communicates with Palo Alto's support engineers."
"We have run into some issues with scaling and limitations associated with some of the configurations."
"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."
"The product's AIOps process needs improvement."
"There's an issue that when we deploy UTM on fiber, it automatically upgrades to the latest version without giving an option to stay on the current one."
"There can be a delay when it comes to reaching out to technical support."
"The scalability of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"There is still room for improvement in wireless protection. I don't mean their WiFi device is bad, but there are still things to improve on, such as WiFi roaming."
"They could definitely improve on the support, especially in other countries."
"The technical support only communicates via email. I would prefer to communicate directly with someone."
"Needs to improve the certificate management (ex. Let's Encrypt support)."
"With Sophos UTM, there is a general rule in the firewall when the country blocking can block some countries from accessing your data. In the current version, you still need to add it by putting in the IP range. This feature would be helpful for administrators and it gives them the advantage to block stuff in less time."
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. 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 UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Check Point NGFW, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. Sophos UTM report.
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