Cisco Secure Firewall vs Sophos UTM

If you are already using [a] Cisco product like the Cisco ASA Series and you need more security on layer 7 then you can upgrade with firepower. This is well suited for middle and big organizations. If your company deals with credit card information then you should buy this firewall. It provides you all the features to stop any type of advanced attack on your organization

UTM works great if you want a solid, obvious firewall. There's not a lot of second-guessing as to what you are about to do with every change you make. If you incorporate their wireless access points and RED (remote ethernet device) for remote users or small offices, it's considerably much easier to set up than other comparable solutions. If you are looking to manage your firewalls via the cloud, you are out of luck.

• Updates with the HA Pair are incredibly easy and automated
• FMC with Firepowers provide a single place to view information about devices and connections
• Tedious policy changes can be staged during the working hours and then deployed in one click after hours

• Firewall Protection. The protection is unmatched, setup it a little daunting, but once set up it pretty much runs itself.
• Site-to-site VPN. Super easy to deploy so we are able to network all our sites together.
• The DHCP server function is actually really nice, I prefer using it over the traditional way of using a DC for DHCP.

• The UI in Cisco Firepower formerly Sourcefire) is complicated and entirely redundant. A lot of these features are not useful, and therefore, it can be removed from the main window.
• The interface is very slow, with each operation taking a lot of time. Searching through the logs takes too much time.

• Navigating the portal can be tricky depending on what needs to be done
• It would be helpful if the SSLVPN client agent had more logging capabilities

It's overall very great, however the Management Console needs updating to fix the slowness of policy and rule deployments.

The interface is no non-sense and easy to understand. No need for any consultants to help implement this solution. The performance is consistent and solid. Paired with a good amount of firmware and definitions, it's hard to find any fault in this product. It's interoperability with other Sophos products make a compelling argument to invest in more Sophos products.

Cisco support is not at all suitable for this product, at least. It takes a long for them to help us with our server issues. A lot of the time, the customer support person keeps on redirecting calls to another person. They need to be well versed with the terminologies of the product they are supporting us with. Support needs a lot of improvement. Cisco Fire Linux OS, the operating system behind Cisco Firepower NGFW (formerly Sourcefire), also doesn't receive regular patches. In short, average customer service.

The week link of Sophos UTM is the customer support. I haven't had to use it often, but when I do, the wait times can easily be an hour or two. Once I am talking to someone, the support is excellent. The support agents are knowledgeable and can quickly diagnose the issue and get you to a resolution.

Cisco Firepower firewalls have all the features expected of an NGFW. Managed with a Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, most of the learning curve is just knowing where in the menus to go to do what you want. All brands of firewalls work as expected, and learning each GUI is the trick. The GUI for Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center is simple. Though when devices are registered to Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, there are no options to make changes locally and sync them back to the management center. That does limit accessing a remote site that might go down.

I would rate Sophos second on this list right below Webroot. Webroot has an easier user interface and policy builder. However, Sophos would be on top of its UI would be improved. I would rank CrowStrike third and McAfee last. Sophos is great for complex environments that have multiple needs.

• This product is great for inspection and normal firewall controls.
• If there's a bug in it, it can take a lot of resource time to chase it and work around it.
• Deciphering which data is useful has taken a bit of time and trimming.

• Sophos came in right on budget for our needs - perfect ROI
• Security is like life insurance - you can always buy more, but finding that sweet spot where you are covered just right is key.