SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) vs. SonicWall VPN Clients

SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) is well suited as a solution for VPN on your phone. It allows our agency's employees to access our data and system from almost any device at any time. SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) is less appropriate if you need to implement the product in a very short time frame, as it took longer than expected for rollout to staff.

Incentivized

If your organization has a full-time IT department or support staff, SonicWall VPN Clients might be a good fit. Configuration can be challenging if you're a small business office manager who HAPPENS to take care of IT (as in my case). Still, once the SonicWall VPN Clients is configured, it works pretty well and at minimal ongoing cost. We opted for extended support from the manufacturer just in case we run into issues that we can't address internally.

Incentivized

• Secure remote access
• Control what access users can have
• Protect from harmful sites and downloads

Incentivized

• Exceptional security
• Relatively easy configuration

Incentivized

• SMA is limited to only SSL VPN , it should have support for hybrid VPN (SSL + IPSEC)
• There are different specs and features for Enterprise and SMB. Features should be same for all devices.
• It does not have URL filtering, content filtering, AV/IPS and Threat Prevention features. For achieving the same, we need to deploy another product like firewall or proxy.

Incentivized

• Connections could be more stable
• Difficult to use for tech-challenged end-users

Incentivized

Phone support has been very reliable and useful, but there have been times when better support documentation would have made that call unnecessary. I like to tackle problems internally if I can, as it tends to save time and usually money. The SonicWall VPN Clients system seems to be pretty locked down as far as being accessible to self-manage.

Incentivized

Both Citrix Gateway and Sonic Secure Mobile Access are great for providing your workers with the ability to work remotely during the pandemic to access their office network. Both have secure networks and are stable systems to use. They both perform well for employees and provide helpful customer tech support when needed.

Incentivized

We started the process of vetting Norton VPN, but since it wasn't available from our preferred vendor, we ended up going with SonicWall VPN Clients by default.

Incentivized

• Security incidents went down by about 30%.
• With the new world of hybrid work, this SMA functions well and is a necessity.
• We've had a few issues with patches breaking functions.

Incentivized

• ROI is difficult to determine because of the minimal initial cost; that said, now that we've experienced the benefits of having secure VPN access, we couldn't imagine not having it.
• Users have much greater flexibility now that specific legacy systems are accessible from places other than the office.

Incentivized