Fortinet V sophos XG

[sluggster66]

Hi

 

Looking at moving our Firewall/filtering and connectivity from County.

 

I have narrowed down to the two UTMs mentioned above.

 

Would appreciate peoples opinions on the two solutions.

 

Thanks in advance

[AlanD]

Well - actually I thik its YOUR opinion that matters...not someone else's...because I guess most of us have chosen a solution based on our particular set of circumstances and priorities - which doesn't necessarily translate to your situation. Most off free trials - which are easy to do with virtual hardware- and I guess Fortinet and Sophos are amongst these. Fortinet's detailed reporting was an add on (if my memory serves me correctly) - which put me off - and I wasn't convinced that it was going to report of google searches...although it seems to have a good reputation for "blocking". Sophos offered reverse proxy - which I would have liked...but it seemed less than friendly to configure. In the end we went for smoothwall (or stonewall as it was soon rechristened by our staff). I though it was over priced...but I thought they were all over priced....and it doesn't integrate firewall and web proxy controls so you end up having to configure both port rules and web blocking/allows rules - and its not as simple of tick the box to allow Spotify for BYOD....you need to add lists of sites to allow and ports...which must be repeated by every smoothwall user....but it did integrate radius, wireless and AD authentication for wireless quite nicely.

[sluggster66]

Thanks Alan

 

What I'm particularly interested in is the Fortianalizer as I have not used one before.

 

I have looked at Sophos which looks really good and I have a Fortinet at one of our other schools, it is a great firewall, but not good at reporting on web access, so was interested in anyone who had used a Fortianalizer.

[ass17]

Smoothwall is what we use, but I use Sophos UTM at home, both rock solid products..

[Davit2005]

Get some demo units in, Would look at Sophos UTM based on experience of the WS1000, or probably BLOXX (used this a few years back, used to be good) and McFee used to do a solution a few years back but it was a truly horrible interface.

[IrritableTech]

Get some demo units in, Would look at Sophos UTM based on experience of the WS1000, or probably BLOXX (used this a few years back, used to be good) and McFee used to do a solution a few years back but it was a truly horrible interface.

 

Bloxx shut down a few years ago. I think the last support contract will have just about completed by now too.

[SchoolsBroadband]

We're big Fortinet fans being a Gold MSSP. The filtering is pretty good and reporting excellent if you start to use Fortianalyzer with it too.

 

Fortigates excel in the UTM functionality and the ASIC processors it uses for hardware acceleration and in our opinion (and Gartners) out performs the competition.

 

We use virtualised Fortigate firewalls in the cloud one carrier grade Fortigates so you can "flex" the amount of processing power given to individual virtual firewalls. This means that if you upgrade your Internet line at a later date and need more processing power then you don't have to go out and buy a new box.

 

We also do virutalised Fortianalyzer service too.

 

All in for a virtualised Fortigate with UTM licence and Fortianalyzer on a dual resilient platform including engineer setup your talking £2,900pa which is pretty good when you consider a Fortigate 200E costs £5,400 for a single box year 1.

 

We can quote for onsite boxes and professional services too of course so I'll send you a PM if its of interest.

 

Good luck

 

Dave

[jamesp]

Hi all/OP

I would go with Xg for that main reason being the logging and reporting, the customisation is fantastic as is the automation to pump out reports (standard and custom) to others in your org, Daily keyword filterlist hits etc to safeguarding/e-safety officers.

Other than that its a one pane firewall thus easy to relate to and administer.

I could probably give a demo if it would be useful