Should I stay or should I go now - Smoothwall

[Simcfc73]

Hi,

 

Its getting to that time of year again when i get pee'd off with SW and start looking at other vendors. I've never looked in anger really as SW just works but the continuing annoyances with the safeguarding logs and the abysmal reporting has briung it to a head.

 

We are a small school, I have a S8 applicance with around 500 users.

 

Things I like about SW

 

• It just works
  
• Its fast
  
• Its filtering is excellent
  
• BYOD is working (on Glamis anyway, Inverness breaks it)
  
• Chomebooks auth works well
  
• The firewall is rock solid
  

Things I hate

• Awful reporting
  
• over complicated in some areas
  
• Slow on new developments
  
• Did I say awful reporting
  

 

Obviously we invested in a S8 box which i like but the Sophos stuff looks really interesting and if the SW quote is ridiculous I might want to jump ship.

 

Anyone moved from SW to Sophos.. I still have a bad taste mentioning Sophos from 15 years ago using their resource hogging AV

[tobiasclarity]

Censornet could be an option to move to? We are currently with Netsweeper but looking to move also and found Censornet

[mrwoberts]

I support a number of 'small' schools and I've got a demo of iBoss arranged for Friday 3rd. If you have any particular questions (further to the list above) that you'd like me to ask the rep directly then I can do that and feedback to you. Someone may well answer your questions on here anyway, but...

I'm also looking at iCeni. Both can supply the hardware, which is great.

 

I believe for both products their pricing is in the region of £ 3.50 - £ 4 per user, but don't quote me.

[SchoolsBroadband]

We're big Lightspeed and Fortinet fans here. Both can do the job and reporting is excellent, fast and easy to us.

 

Dave

[sparkeh]

Moving from SW to Sophos in a couple of weeks. Was impressed by the demo we had (UI much better than SW) and the price was sensible (SW quote was just silly).

 

I sought out some honest feedback from Sophos users and all were very positive.

[Achandler]

The reporting in iBoss is pretty much a simialr standard to Smoothwalls to be honest, I've seen both. Currently have Smoothwall and was looking to move to iBoss, one thign I hoped was the reporting was better. It wasn't, it was just as cumbersome! UI was nicer though!

[Fazza]

We've been with Fortinet for many years now and there is ZERO reporting so steer clear of them.

[Simcfc73]

Moving from SW to Sophos in a couple of weeks. Was impressed by the demo we had (UI much better than SW) and the price was sensible (SW quote was just silly).

 

I sought out some honest feedback from Sophos users and all were very positive.

 

Is the Sophos a all in one product like SW? Firewall and filtering in one appliance?

[SchoolsBroadband]

We've been with Fortinet for many years now and there is ZERO reporting so steer clear of them.

 

That's not right @Fazza.

 

The Fortigate firewall itself does come with little reporting but if you purchase Forticloud (Cloud based reporting) or FortiAnalyzer (dedicated box or VM) then you get a huge amount of reporting functionality which is actually quite brilliant.

 

Dave

[Achandler]

Any filtering system where reporting is an addon is surely a bit of a joke?

 

Yeah we will fitler stuff for you, but haha no you can't see what people have actually been doing... Fundamental in my opinion.

[fiza]

What is it about the Smoothwall reporting that is so bad? We are about to implement SW so this concerns me. We were told the reporting was really good.

[sparkeh]

Is the Sophos a all in one product like SW? Firewall and filtering in one appliance?

Yep.

 

In the offer we had there were different levels you can go for but all included filtering and firewall. We went for the option with the VPN module (like SW has) Web Application Firewall (which was a big additional cost on top of the already sizeable SW renewal).

 

If you want the bumf I was sent about it then let me know.

[Achandler]

It's not bad, as it it doesn't report stuff.

 

The problems I find are, firstly it takes a lot of getting use to and finding what seems quite basic can be overly complicated so you go round it circles and its frustrating.

 

Secondly, to many false positives in the Safeguarding feature at the moment, although Inverness is meant to have fixed that!

[Fazza]

That's not right @FazzaThe Fortigate firewall itself does come with little reporting but if you purchase Forticloud (Cloud based reporting) or FortiAnalyzer (dedicated box or VM) then you get a huge amount of reporting functionality which is actually quite brilliant.

 

The you need to tell your staff that as that's not the information we've had from you guys over the last SIX YEARS! Always been told it's too CPU heavy and will cause the Fortinet box to grind to a halt. We were also told not to worry as you'll be making your own system to store the logs making it better - which we've never seen.

 

Therefore based on the information your company has given us over the last 6 years, steer clear of Fortinet if you want reporting.

[localzuk]

Is the Sophos a all in one product like SW? Firewall and filtering in one appliance?

Yes. Contains Firewall, Filtering, Email filtering, reverse proxy, VPN, remote access portal, and can also manage Sophos wireless APs, and provide MDM management and Sophos endpoint protection management.

[Simcfc73]

Yes. Contains Firewall, Filtering, Email filtering, reverse proxy, VPN, remote access portal, and can also manage Sophos wireless APs, and provide MDM management and Sophos endpoint protection management.

 

Cool, If I can get it for £3k I might jump ship

[Davit2005]

I'm yet to find a combined Firewall with Filtering that beats a dedicated URL filtering solution such as Sophos, BLOXX was pretty good from past experience.

[kennysarmy]

What is it about the Smoothwall reporting that is so bad? We are about to implement SW so this concerns me. We were told the reporting was really good.

 

I think you've been misled.

 

I also find the reporting unbelievably unnecessarily complicated - you should have asked to see this in a demo rather than just taking for granted some salesman's flannel....

[TechMonkey]

I'm yet to find a combined Firewall with Filtering that beats a dedicated URL filtering solution such as Sophos, BLOXX was pretty good from past experience.

 

Do any of them do Content Filtering? I thought straight URL filtering was old hat as it is next to impossible to keep up to date?

[sparkeh]

I think you've been misled.

 

I also find the reporting unbelievably unnecessarily complicated - you should have asked to see this in a demo rather than just taking for granted some salesman's flannel....

Agreed. Getting stuff out is a chore. Simple stuff like getting the box to send the daily alert email is not as straight forward as it should be.

[mthomas08]

We use lightspeed plus we're going to a different supplier for it and our broadband. We've managed to save quite a bit of money while getting double the bandwidth.

 

The lightspeed report currently is slow due to the way LEA has it all setup, hosted by them and for a single report it took us two whole days. Typically it was the one we needed quite urgently.

 

Our new provider is more local to us and also provided our phone system. I can't complain too much about lightspeed it self.

[Davit2005]

Do any of them do Content Filtering? I thought straight URL filtering was old hat as it is next to impossible to keep up to date?

 

I've seen it in SonicWall and PaloAlto. Both had systems which kept up to date via external databases. The PaloAlto was the interesting one as I seem to remember if it lost connection to URL filtering it let anything through, maybe it is the way it was set up????

[localzuk]

Sophos doesn't do live content filtering, no. That said, the URL filtering is very good so far.

[Mr_Jiminy]

Does SW do live/ dynamic content filtering?

[TechMonkey]

Sophos doesn't do live content filtering, no. That said, the URL filtering is very good so far.

 

Bummer, I like the look of the Sophos solution but content filtering is high on my requirements.

 

Does SW do live/ dynamic content filtering?

Yes, it is their big selling point. At one point I think they were the only one doing it.

Edited February 24, 2017 by TechMonkey