Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Sophos UTM

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Firewall
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Firewall delivers comprehensive threat protection for modern, distributed environments. It offers an architecture designed to support hybrid and multicloud strategies, enabling Zero Trust access, robust application visibility, and secure remote work. With integrations across the Cisco Secure portfolio and threat intelligence from Talos, Cisco Secure Firewall helps organizations stop more threats, respond faster, and reduce complexity through centralized management and automation.N/A
Sophos UTM
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Sophos UTM provides core firewall features, plus sandboxing and AI threat detection for advanced network security. It has customizable deployment options.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Secure FirewallSophos UTM
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure FirewallSophos UTM
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Detailst2.small - $0.123 - Total / hr m3.medium - $0.417 - Total / hr m3.large - $0.883 - Total / hr m3.xlarge - $1.366 - Total / hr m3.2xlarge- $1.982 - Total / hr c3.large - $0.555 - Total / hr c3.xlarge - $1.11 - Total / hr c3.2xlarge - $1.72 - Total / hr c3.4xlarge - $2.59 - Total / hr c3.8xlarge - $3.68 - Total / hr c4.large - $0.55 - Total / hr c4.xlarge - $1.099 - Total / hr c4.2xlarge - $1.698 - Total / hr c4.4xlarge - $2.546 - Total / hr c4.8xlarge - $3.841 - Total / hr m4.large - $0.868 - Total / hr m4.xlarge - $1.365 - Total / hr m4.2xlarge- $1.931 - Total / hr
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure FirewallSophos UTM
Features
Cisco Secure FirewallSophos UTM
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Firewall
7.8
128 Ratings
10% below category average
Sophos UTM
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies8.0112 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.0113 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection7.8110 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.4118 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.0101 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.5117 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.5119 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN7.9104 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability8.3113 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.3109 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server6.958 Ratings00 Ratings
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Cisco Secure FirewallSophos UTM
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Score 9.2 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
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Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Secure FirewallSophos UTM
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(136 ratings)
9.0
(11 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(77 ratings)
7.9
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure FirewallSophos UTM
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Kind of going back to my previous point, segregating networks, it's super useful for that. It's easy to look through firewall logs and see what's going on in your network. Also like intrusion detection and prevention. So great security products for the network.
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Sophos
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.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Gives detailed information on what user is utilizing the VPN such as Ip address and the origin of country for the Ip address.
  • The graphical user interface is detailed and organized, a good level of intuition.
  • It provides troubleshooting tools such as packet tracer, that allows individuals to see where the packets are being accepted or dropped.
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Sophos
  • 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.
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Cons
Cisco
  • I have one argument, failover scenario. It's not quite easy. Failover scenario of firewalls. It's sometimes not quite easy to know the issue. But if we open a tech case, a technical case to Cisco, Cisco will help us, it's a little bit con, but we are happy with this product.
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Sophos
  • Better standard support, it used to be great, now, not so much (for paying customers, that only aquired the Hardware)
  • Better wireless solution, there is always room for that, now that everybody needs robust wifi, even at home!
  • Faster and more robust wireless Access Points, or different vendor-like compatibility.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
It works really well. We can do most anything we want or need to with it, and you don’t have to have a doctorate or multiple certs to necessarily figure it out. The thing that would probably have to happen to make us switch would be if we just got priced out - Cisco’s more powerful and higher bandwidth models cost a pretty penny.
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cisco
Solution is highly effective, offers a lot of features with constant improvements and additions of new features over time. It's relatively easy to get familiar with the system, especially if transitioning from adaptive security appliances. If this is not the case, as for learnability there's a learning curve but once learned it is relatively easy to remember the details about the system even after a period of non-use
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Sophos
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
We have had really good success with Cisco Secure Firewall when it comes to availability. Even when we’ve had temporary issues with one appliance or the other, or with the Firewall Management Center, it has stayed up and defended our network diligently. We even had an issue where the licensing got disabled for multiple days, and it kept spinning like a top
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cisco
no slowing down, vpn is working fast
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
Firewall support is professional just like any other technology Cisco sells. From answering simple questions to bringing out outages affecting a large population of our workforce, Cisco support is always courteous, professional, and communicates with our team to keep our request on their radar. Some of the brightest people I've met are from Cisco support both in IQ and EQ which shows the talent Cisco is able to onboard to their team.
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Sophos
I find the support fair. The wait can be frustrating when dealing with fire. The pandemic has not helped with this. Although the wait can be long, the support reps are knowledgeable and was able to resolve the issues I was facing.
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In-Person Training
Cisco
very good
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Cisco
was a good training but questions was answered not so good. Training was "Fundamentals of Cisco Firewall Threat Defense and Intrusion Prevention (SFWIPF)".
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
Our initial implementation was aided by Cisco's professional services and was excellent. The engineer was very knowledgeable and helped us work through issues while building out our new internet security edge Part of this involved tools to migrate the firewall configuration from old to new.
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Cisco Secure Firewall works better with the Cisco ecosystem when we can utilize it and feels beefy enough when we utilize it in the data center. The Fortinet we have found are great, small cost boxes for remote offices with a better UI then Cisco Secure Firewalls. The feature set included with the firewalls feels similar from a security point of view.
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Sophos
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.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
was not involved
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Cisco
you can choose up to 50 devices i think thats enough for our organization
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Cisco
was not involved
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • I think it's all been positive, except for the fact, like I was mentioning before, when we had problems with the initial integration, we were trying to migrate over to the new FMC and from the 1500 to the 1600, we had some downtime during that time and we had to do some escalations within Cisco Tech. They were very helpful, but I think that was the biggest thing, and that's long since been resolved. So I don't really have any other thing, anything negative to say at this point. I think it's all positive.
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Sophos
  • Sophos has provided a secure Firewall for us.
  • Integration with Sophos Central makes it easier to manage both.
  • Site to site VPN Failover groups has caused more trouble than it's worth.
  • High availability doesn't recognize when you are restarting for an update.
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