UK headquartered Sophos offers web content filtering.
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WatchGuard DNSWatchGO
Score 8.5 out of 10
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WatchGuard DNSWatchGO provides DNS-level protection and content filtering that keeps the user's business safe from phishing, ransomware, and other attacks even when a user is outside of the network, without requiring a VPN.
Before Sophos, I would receive scammers regarding tradeshow lists. People wanted me to pay for lists, but these people weren't actually from the tradeshows. I can now block those, and have received much fewer of those scams. I am also able to open emails within quarantine to view them before deleting, releasing, allowing, or blocking. I use this to my advantage, and am able to make better decisions on what to do with the emails.
While DNSWatchgo offers the same categories as Application Control offers on the Watchguard firewalls, the WebBlocker categories are not offered. This is really a disappointment and Watchgurad should really consider adding the extra WebBlocker categories to DMSWatchGo. In my opinion, reporting in DNSWatchGo is minimal to say the least and could use drastic additions. as it is today it does offer very little info to the admins. The identification of registered clients is flawed. It seems that the same clients are registered multiple times on the management platform, thus unnecessarily consuming licenses. In my experience, it is really annoying to have to remove the duplicate clients every time again and again. On the positive side, when one already has Watchguard firewalls seting up DNSWatchGo is really easy, as it shares the same categories with Watchguard firewall Application Control. So easily one can almost the firewall functionality on laptops. And we say almost, because DNSWatchGo is missing the WebBlocker categories / blocking capabilities to be considered a full firewall replacement.
Sophos does an excellent job of category-based content filtering. It's easy to configure and flexible for many environments with the ability to tighten or loosen restrictions as requirements determing.
Sophos' built-in capabilites can force safe search rules to protect against content work-arounds like Image search and search engines in general.
The Sophos XTreme architecture also helps improve the overall performance of the Web Content Filtering solution. It is very quick and very transparent when in use on the network.
While DNSWatchgo offers the same categories as Application Control offers on the Watchguard firewalls, the WebBlocker categories are not offered.
Reporting is minimal and could use massive upgrades.
The identification of registered clients is flawed. It seems that the same clients are registered multiple times on the management platform, thus unnecessarily consuming licenses.
We really need an extra layer of protection for our laptops. Choosing the DNSWatchGo makes sense as we have Watchguard firewall. If we had another brand of firewalls we would probably use anther product instead!
Sophos has been a much easier product to configure and eventually manage, with preset rules and policies to start off right out of the box, saving administrators time from adding every category and or site. However you can add/import all know good company sites (internal url's) as well as local sites for a safer settings. (know sites)
At the time we were looking for a DNS based protection solution we had also tried "Blue Shield Umbrella". Both programs had similar behavior, but the main reason we eventually decided to go with DNSWatchGo was the fact the we have WatchGurd firewalls. So deploying DNSWatchGo was easy as we just copied the Application Control settings from our firewalls to the DNSWatchGo setup. Also Watchguard firewalls already have the DNSWatch service for the PCs that are connected to them while inside the company network, so it makes sense to equip them with the same shield while outside the company network.
