pfSense vs. Sophos XG Firewall

pfSense is incredibly budget friendly and capable for organizations of all sizes. My specific scenario, working for a non-profit organization, requires budget consciences decisions without compromising security and function. pfSense has helped tremendously in accomplishing this. It specifically tackles advanced routing, static routing, remote access, intrusion prevention, in a single platform, mostly available for free.

Incentivized

It is well-suited for small, medium, and large organizations looking for comprehensive cybersecurity protection. It will not only safeguard their network from cyberattacks but also provide them with many advanced features like deep packet inspection, centralized management, web filtering, application control, etc. in one place. It will help them optimize bandwidth and ensure continued connectivity.

Incentivized

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• It provides you with advanced threat protection against cyberattacks.
• It gives you deep visibility on risky users, applications, threats, etc.
• It gives you an automatic response whenever threat is detected.
• It offers many features like web filtering and application control and helps optimize bandwidth.
• It ensures continued connectivity by providing features like load balancing, failover, etc.

Incentivized

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

Incentivized

Because this is a user-friendly interface, and anyone can use it there are multiple articles and guidelines available, it has advanced-level security features. they provide VPN solutions all the features are very practical, SSID MAC-based authentications web control, Firewall rules segregation of the rules and policies, On-premises Active directory single sign-on feature is also available.

As we are all addicted to graphics-oriented interfaces for all our life products. Easy to manage and access as a good way of using anything

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

I was a big fan of Cisco ASA products, but when I saw all of the security feature differences between both firewalls, I moved to Sophos devices. Its sandbox, IPS, and many more features are really advanced. Cisco does not provide features like this.

Incentivized

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized

• True UTM device.
• Very Active customer help for any help.
• Easy license and cost effective.
• Should [do] more work on logging and reporting.