Cisco Umbrella vs. Sophos XG Firewall

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Umbrella
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Cisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.N/A
Sophos XG Firewall
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Sophos XG Firewall provides comprehensive next-generation firewall protection powered by deep learning and Synchronized Security. The vendor states XG Firewall supplies unmatched insights and exposes hidden user, application, and threat risks on the network, and say the product is differentiated by its ability to respond automatically to security incidents by isolating compromised systems, with Security Heartbeat™.N/A
Pricing
Cisco UmbrellaSophos XG Firewall
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco UmbrellaSophos XG Firewall
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco UmbrellaSophos XG Firewall
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco UmbrellaSophos XG Firewall
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Umbrella
-
Ratings
Sophos XG Firewall
8.2
7 Ratings
4% below category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings7.57 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings6.67 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings8.47 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings9.17 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.86 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.07 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.27 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings9.17 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings8.97 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings7.87 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings7.96 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco UmbrellaSophos XG Firewall
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

SonicWall TZ
SonicWall TZ
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Cisco Firepower 4100 Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco UmbrellaSophos XG Firewall
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(82 ratings)
8.7
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.5
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(62 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.1
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco UmbrellaSophos XG Firewall
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Well suited to networks that include Active directory, as you can hook it into the directory to allow you to target specific users and computers. Not particularly well suited to personal users due to the price point, and also not well suited to organisations with disorganised IT, since the system can be bypassed simply by changing the DNS server of the device. You need a dedicated IT department to ensure these sorts of settings are locked down
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Sophos
This is the best product for small-size organizations with a low budget that want advanced and deep-level security features. Sandboxing and advanced malware protection are the most valuable features available on Sophos devices. Other features like applications and web content make your organization more secure, and you can put more restrictions on users.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Cisco Umbrella protects our devices and users from malicious sites of all kinds.
  • Cisco Umbrella allows us to add additional web site types we may want to block for specific users.
  • Cisco Umbrella keeps the list of sites blocked current by utilizing data from their entire security platform.
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Sophos
  • You can scan every packet deeply through sandboxing.
  • Control the user traffic through content filtering.
  • Put the restrictions on user web traffic through web filtering.
  • Control any type of malware through anti virus.
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Cons
Cisco
  • Umbrella Virtual Appliances have been buggy in resolving local domain hosts.
  • Integration between other Cisco and Meraki products is complicated.
  • Reporting is not always accurate; for example, if you configure a Meraki access point to use an Umbrella Virtual Appliance, you lose device reporting. All reporting shows up under the AP's IP.
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Sophos
  • If using Endpoint security and the Firewall it would be nice to have an easier back and forth between the portals rather than have two separate tabs open. Especially if using more than one in multiple locations.
  • If dealing with different revisions options are moved around and sometimes in places that doesn't normally seem like they should be there.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
First off I never give anything a "10" unless it's perfect. LOL - I grade on the curve. I think OpenDNS/Umbrella is a very good product. I think that fact that Cisco absorbed them is one of the proofs of that. I have used the product back when it was free for companies our size. I have not always appreciated the cost - but in the post pandemic cyber chaos, I believe the cost benefit ratio is still very high. I have honestly not looked at other products because Umbrella continues to work to my satisfaction. I consider Umbrella to be one of the key layers in my cyber security strategy.
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cisco
Better features and easy to manage system with great customer support and overall usability is great as it works for hybrid environment with ease as it is having features for on prem users as wells as cloud users with great customer support and great team of trained engineers to support our opeartions.
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Sophos
It is a good and pleasant experience to use Sophos XG firewall and it offers more then what we expect and the price is ok in the current market level
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
Cisco Umbrella's availability was great, they got back to me in less than an hour to get my problem solved.
We needed to get our Meraki AP's hooked up to Cisco Umbrella to monitor that specific traffic and they got back to me promptly, they guided me and explained every question I had.
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
We have not had a chance to use Cisco support frequently, but when we needed to troubleshoot some issues that we were having with the agent installation, the support was very responsive and the solution that they offered worked. The only reason I give it one less point is that the turnaround time for non-critical issues is very long.
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Sophos
Honestly we didn't get the premium support from them, but our partner has been supportive. Online forums are also a good place to learn things from.
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Online Training
Cisco
Quite easy to understand training modules prepared by knowledgeable trainers.
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
At the time we were forced to move from Cloud Web Security to Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Umbrella was far from being a direct replacement. It was frustrating and difficult to migrate due to the lack of functionality. This has since been addressed, however we now have legacy rulesets that were built as bandaids that cannot be removed. Hopefully the migration to Secure Access will address this.
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Sophos
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We used a product before this called iPrism by EdgeWave and also briefly tried Barracuda Web Security in the cloud. We were having such a large influx of service desk calls about proxy-based layer 7 web filters that we wanted to step back and pick something more at the DNS level, to protect our employees but not hover over their social media use, etc. Cisco will also employ a layer 7 proxy if a site is suspicious, which does require us to push a certificate out should we want that feature. For most policies we have it enabled.
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Sophos
We have been a Sophos customer for the most part but i have seen some other offerings from SonicWall, Barracuda, and Cisco. While they all offer nice products, we've always been content with our Sophos XG firewalls, especially as they release more and more features/etc.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Positive ROI when the service keeps users from going to malicious websites.
  • We had it deployed while users were internal and external with the AnyConnect Umbrella module so our protection was both on and off the corporate network.
  • Great product. Has paid for itself two time over.
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Sophos
  • Easy to integrate with Active Directory & LDAP
  • We don't need to purchase any additional 2FA & VPN Tools so the cost is saved for us
  • High Availability
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ScreenShots

Sophos XG Firewall Screenshots

Screenshot of Sophos XG Firewall v17.5 Control Center