Sophos Cloud UTM 9 (Auto Scaling PAYG)

Sophos UTM is the primary product I work with, specifically the firewalls. I mainly use the application control feature of Sophos UTM, which really helps manage application usage because it is very easy to maintain bandwidth. If you have 20 Mbps in an office for about 100 people, it becomes much easier to manage.

I am not using other Sophos products; Sophos UTM is the only one I use. I have not subscribed for zero-day protection with Sophos UTM; the licenses I have are for email, web protection, and a few other things, but not for zero-day.

The features I have found most valuable in Sophos UTM are that it is much easier to configure, I appreciate the reporting side of it, and the rules are very straightforward to work with.

Sophos UTM's real-time insights into network health help my organization because I get real-time reports on what is happening on my network, what is trying to access me, the destination, and all that. I can then be reactive or proactive, and for zero-day, I think it is beneficial because it can learn what my network does. If anything goes outside what it expects, it sends a report on Sophos Central, so I find zero-day makes my work a bit easier.

The use of Sophos UTM's intuitive management console has impacted my security policy enforcement in that it is much easier to configure; I configure with information rather than with presumptions.

I would like to improve Sophos UTM in that there is software I use that goes deeper in the reporting on usage. There is software called Fastvue that breaks down everything in the firewall and whatever is going on, and I wish you had reporting of that caliber. It would make my work much simpler because it makes decision-making much easier. Fastvue is worth investigating.

I have been using Sophos UTM for five years now.

The initial setup of Sophos UTM is easier, but as you progress, your firewall learns the threats you have. I configure based on whatever threats I see coming in and out.

The pricing for Sophos UTM is reasonable; I do not have an issue with it, though I was considering RED because I have different sites I wanted to connect, and instead of doing site-to-site, the RED option is quite pricey.

I do not see why email protection has to be paid for separately with Sophos UTM. I feel that emails are very essential and should be part of the firewall; it should even be part of the base license. I do not understand why email protection must be a separate cost, and I feel it is ineffective if I do not pay for it because those are the main channels that receive information from outside coming in. If I am required to pay for it and if I do not pay for it, then it is not covered, which makes the entire firewall proposition unclear to me. I believe email protection should be part of the base license. I would rate this review a 9.

We are selling Sophos UTM standard solutions, for example, the entire firewall, access points, RED box, and so on. We also provide the complete program for endpoint security, server security, and mobile security.

We have XDR on the servers regarding Secureworks Taegis XDR and we now want to try NDR because it is new with the new firewalls. Currently, we are in the process of changing the old Sophos UTM firewalls. We are very busy because we have to change approximately 15 firewalls by June.

We have not been providing Sophos Cybersecurity as a service for our customers. We have our own server farm here in our company and we manage this for other customers, mostly from the chemistry area. Because they are what we call KRITIS, Kritische Infrastruktur, critical infrastructure.

We are now migrating from Sophos UTM. In our own company, we have Sophos UTM. We are in the phase where we have changed our XG, our Sophos UTM completely to XGS. We are now in the change management phase for our customers. Tomorrow we will change to XGS for one customer and so on. We will change approximately 15 XGS systems.

I used Sophos UTM Application Control feature, including Web Control, Web Protection, Application Control, and all the points on Sophos UTM.

The integration of Sophos UTM with other Sophos products in threat intelligence sharing has been completely managed by us, ourselves. We are now going to use the central services, but we are still concerned because of data protection, because we do not know where all the data will be stored in the cloud. If there would only be a European cloud, our life would be much better than if the central services or central server were in the cloud, so that the Cloud Act from the USA would also be one of the points we do not really understand. Because we saw the situation, this was also a reason because we managed our Sophos UTM systems by ourselves. In the first time, we also had an access server system which could also be on-premises. This is one of the main things. We have a little problem because of the situation, the USA and the European Union and so on. Because we also have firewalls in other European countries like Italy, Spain, and RED boxes in Hungary, Poland, and some other countries. We also have XGS in Italy and in Spain and so on. One customer is in Istanbul, in Turkey.

Regarding Secureworks Taegis VDR Vulnerability Management, I do not have all these shortcuts in my head. Perhaps I have to ask my technicians, but we are in full stress because we have to change this entire firewall equipment, also the entire access points, because of the end of life. We also have the full product in for XDR and extensions. We are also part of the webinars from Sophos. It would be better if there were also some important webinars in German.

Everything needs improvement, because also the wireless, also RED box and so on. The handling was much easier on the old equipment than on the new XGS. I think there should also be a little more automatic for SD-WAN routing and so on. Because we have to learn some things from the basic completely new because it is different than Sophos UTM, the XGS.

The features that could be improved about Sophos UTM include the new features we have in XGS with a simpler interface. For example, in Sophos UTM, we could define IP hosts and use this IP host. We did not have to insert on every, for example, for wide area networks, we had to put the IP addresses from the other side by hand. In Sophos UTM, we could define it under definitions and then use this IP host where we needed it. In the new XGS, if there is a change in the IP address, we have to do it on all, for example, site-to-site VPN tunnels and so on. We have much more work and it is not so easy because we have to check all the definitions.

It is also, for example, some of the male technicians like me, we have a biology handicap. For example, male technicians in Europe also have a red-green problem. So we use these light colors on the interface. In some cases, it is not easy to see the, for example, letters or numbers because of the contrast.

We have been using this product for more than 10 years. We started with Astaro, and also with the products before Astaro. So we have been on this firewall type for a long time. Also then on Sophos UTM as SG or what the names are, Security Gateways, and what they were called. The interface of Sophos UTM is much better than the interface from the XGS.

We are now doing the setup by hand because we do not have a tool for the change from Sophos UTM to XGS.

We are looking at other options and we have to handle some other firewalls for some other customers, but we do not want to tell about this now because we are still promoting Sophos and we want to give customers the tip that it would be better to change to Sophos.

The performance of the old Sophos UTM, because it is an old technique, is much slower than the XGS. Because most of our customer locations have now glass fibers. We see that the performance will increase with the new XGS.

On Sophos UTM, the intuitive management console is better, the intuitive handling is better. The interface is better than on XGS. The interface could be improved because on Sophos UTM it was much easier to understand. Here we have to access several points, for example, to build up a route-based VPN tunnel. We have completely learned this handling from the basic new. We have done it the last two years because we started with XGS in 2023.

I would rate Sophos UTM with a score of eight or nine out of ten.

My main use case for Sophos UTM is to support several customers; we have some enterprise customers as well, but they use different firewalls, and for the smaller customers, usually we have our local Sophos, and then they have their own Sophos at their premises. We usually have site-to-site VPNs and monitor their on-premise equipment with our monitoring system.

At our own company, we also use Sophos UTM as a mail gateway, and we use it for the VPNs for the road warriors, providing remote access for employees.

In my opinion, the best features Sophos UTM offers are part of the firewall itself, so we don't need an extra appliance, we don't need to set up extra open-source VMs or anything. It's just part of the gateway that is connected to the internet anyway, and we protect our Exchange servers with it. This works fairly well in my opinion, and it's good.

What I appreciate most about the features is that you can have modules with Sophos UTM, so network protection including the reverse proxy, or that you can have a module for the email protection, a module for the network protection, and so on. You really can only purchase the functions you need and still have the possibility to add later, so that's excellent.

Sophos UTM has positively impacted my organization certainly in all of those areas because any security system you have is better than none. The ease of use and the pricing have made it very easy even for smaller clients to have certain security measures in place. I would count that as a win for security and cost saving at the same time.

I can share specific outcomes regarding Sophos UTM; we've seen reduced costs certainly. Either the clients wouldn't have any security measures at all, just an ISP provided router, but those don't serve very well security-wise. Or they would have had larger, more expensive firewalls, and Sophos UTM really is easier on the budget. We've also seen time saved, definitely. We streamlined all our clients into using Sophos UTM if they want to have their on-premise infrastructure monitored, and that really saves a ton of time.

The needed improvements for Sophos UTM include that the GUI could be a little more high-resolution-aware because it's still stuck in the small, low-resolution admin days, and those are long over.

I choose a rating of nine out of ten for Sophos UTM because, as I mentioned, the graphical user interface is stuck in the past, and some things here and there are not implemented to the full, such as the reverse gateway thing, reverse proxy, and web application firewall. If you want to really implement some rules that are a little bit more difficult, Sophos always recommends getting the dedicated WAF, or web application firewall, but I would prefer to have more features on the web application firewall in the firewall itself because it would make more sense. Other than that, it's a very smooth experience, and I really appreciate it.

I have been using Sophos UTM since before it became Sophos. I used it from the Astaro days, actually, before they were bought by Sophos, so since 2009. I have been using Astaro and all the way up until recently when it became Sophos UTM.

Sophos UTM is very stable.

In terms of scalability, Sophos UTM is very good. You can have large appliances or small appliances, you can change them, you can have high availability clusters, so very, very scalable in my opinion.

The customer support for Sophos UTM used to be better when it was still Astaro, but those days are long gone. The customer support has been good to mediocre, but not very good.

I previously used different solutions; for the smallest of our customers, I usually use OPNsense, for example, the open-source firewall, because they don't want to pay any money whatsoever, besides needing more time to set up and everything. For larger customers, we usually had a FortiGate, for example, but FortiGate is a little bit more expensive and a little bit harder to set up, so I count Sophos UTM really good for that.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing with Sophos UTM is that I was astonished to find that the prices are a little lower than competitors, and I'm really pleased with the functionality that you get for the price.

I have seen a return on investment with Sophos UTM, and I can share that the price is around thirty percent better, especially if you count in the employee time.

Before choosing Sophos UTM, I evaluated other options including FortiGate, OPNsense, and SonicWall, which was one customer using.

The customer support for Sophos UTM used to be better when it was still Astaro, but those days are long gone. The customer support has been good to mediocre, but not very good.

In my opinion, the best features Sophos UTM offers are part of the firewall itself, so we don't need an extra appliance, we don't need to set up extra open-source VMs or anything. It's just part of the gateway that is connected to the internet anyway, and we protect our Exchange servers with it.

I choose a rating of nine out of ten for Sophos UTM because, as I mentioned, the graphical user interface is stuck in the past, and some things here and there are not implemented to the full, such as the reverse gateway thing, reverse proxy, and web application firewall.

What I appreciate most about the features is that you can have modules with Sophos UTM, so network protection including the reverse proxy, or that you can have a module for the email protection, a module for the network protection, and so on.

At our own company, we also use Sophos UTM as a mail gateway, and we use it for the VPNs for the road warriors, providing remote access for employees.

In terms of scalability, Sophos UTM is very good. You can have large appliances or small appliances, you can change them, you can have high availability clusters, so very, very scalable in my opinion.

I can share specific outcomes regarding Sophos UTM; we've seen reduced costs certainly. Either the clients wouldn't have any security measures at all, just an ISP provided router, but those don't serve very well security-wise.

Before choosing Sophos UTM, I evaluated other options including FortiGate, OPNsense, and SonicWall.

My advice for others looking into using Sophos UTM is that it's really good to have fairly good knowledge of Linux because Sophos UTM is built on Linux and it helps debugging, it helps, for example, network tracing, and issue fixing. Other than that, get the introduction course and get ready to deploy. It's really easy. I give Sophos UTM an overall rating of nine out of ten.

Sophos UTM was implemented to facilitate laboratory use. I needed a solution for my laboratory, and since I did not have the budget for a license, Sophos provided me with a 15-license free offer, which I use full-time.

The best features Sophos UTM offers are its ease of use and extensive functionality. Sophos UTM is very straightforward to use and has many features, making it simple for me to operate.Creating proxies and proxy rules is fantastic. Sophos UTM has positively impacted my organization with its various functions, and it is the best choice I could have ever made.

At the moment, I have no suggestions on how Sophos UTM can be improved.I created Zero Trust in Sophos, which is excellent.

I have used Sophos UTM for 10 years, operating from Brazilian data centers and the infrastructure of a remote center.

Sophos UTM is stable based on my experience.

My experience with customer support for Sophos UTM has been positive.

I previously used two open-source solutions before switching to Sophos UTM.

I have not seen a return on investment with Sophos UTM.

I have no declaration regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Sophos UTM.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing Sophos UTM.

If security is necessary, I advise using Sophos. My company has a business relationship with this vendor as a reseller. I was offered a gift card or incentive for this review. There is nothing else I want to share about Sophos UTM. You can use my real name when publishing this review. There is no problem using my real name in the review. I do not think there is anything you should change for the future based on this interview. I would not like for you to provide a short poem or haiku that summarizes this review. I rate this review a 9.