Sophos XG and Netsweeper

[m4rk]

We are looking to update our Firewall/Filter later on this year from UTM 9 to XG, mainly to get the benefit of i am told, is the better reporting that XG offers, and that the product has matured since we had the XG hardware installed.

 

Our Head of Online safety was on a course and was told about/shown Netsweeper for filtering. Now the event may have been sponsored by Netseeper, so there could have been a bias towards the product. Is the filtering better on Netsweeper compared to XG based on your schools setup? Obviously there are many different options out there for firewall and filtering, just wondering on what thoughts you all had.

 

Can Netwseeper be used as a virtual appliance using both the onsite XG filtering as well as a cloud based filter too? Does Netsweeper/XG do live keyword alerts that can email staff to alert them that a specific word has been searched for?

 

Is there anything in the Ofsted documentation that has a list of preferred solutions that meets their requirements?

 

Looking for feedback or things that i can look into for our SLT.

 

Cheers

Mark

[caffrey]

At the moment I cannot recommend netsweeper, and you would be better off staying onsite

[m4rk]

Can you elaborate any more on not liking Netsweeper? I am trying to wrap my head how to have a proactive approach to internet safeguarding. Our current filter blocks a lot of things, but the reporting on the UTM is quite poor.

[MYK-IT]

Our current filter blocks a lot of things, but the reporting on the UTM is quite poor.

 

I appreciate that it is more costs, but perhaps FastVue for Sophos UTM/XG may be a solution, especially if it is only the reporting side of Sophos that you are unhappy with.

https://www.fastvue.co/sophos/

 

We'd be struggling if we didn't have and use FastVue and relied just on the firewall's own reporting alone.

Edited January 16, 2020 by MYK-IT

[caffrey]

Reporting on the majority of solutions is abysmal, the problem with Netsweeper is a lot of things are out of my control that I can't fix

[localzuk]

It really depends what you mean by "reporting". Do you mean being able to log in and have a look at someone, searching for their name etc... Or do you mean more monitoring - if someone enters a keyword, it emails someone?

 

The prior, XG is pretty darn good. The latter, you'll struggle to find any filter that does this - it mostly seems to be the bailiwick of classroom monitoring software like Impero or AB Tutor.

[TechMonkey]

I appreciate that it is more costs, but perhaps FastVue for Sophos UTM/XG may be a solution, especially if it is only the reporting side of Sophos that you are unhappy with.

https://www.fastvue.co/sophos/

 

We'd be struggling if we didn't have and use FastVue and relied just on the firewall's own reporting alone.

 

This keeps coming up and I always ask and never get a firm answer, but is Sophos XG priced lower than other solutions that buying a third party reporting tool is a viable option? I mean, Smoothwall reporting isn't great but I can get the info out and the safeguarding reporting is good. Is Sophos + Fastvue a similar cost to an alternative system like Smoothwall or are schools just buying Fastvue as it is a must have with Sophos and that is their chosen platform?

[localzuk]

We don't have Fastvue. We can do all the reporting we need on our XG box directly. For example, I can search for a user's name and have every site they've accessed come up there and then. Or, I can create scheduled reports for category hits etc... Not found a need for Fastvue yet.

[caffrey]

Addons = gouging , plus I dislike sites that hide costs

[TechMonkey]

We don't have Fastvue. We can do all the reporting we need on our XG box directly. For example, I can search for a user's name and have every site they've accessed come up there and then. Or, I can create scheduled reports for category hits etc... Not found a need for Fastvue yet.

 

Thanks for the response.

 

This is part of my confusion, I'm not sure what Fastvue does that makes it indispensable above and beyond what is standard. But every thread that Sophos XG is mentioned in inevitably has Fastvue mentioned as essential. This then leads to my cost query and if the reporting is so bad that an extra is needed to make it work, what is so great about Sophos that makes that issue worth it over any other solution.

[synaesthesia]

Yes, but they are nothing to do with the company themselves, so not gouging. Sophos XG IMHO is one of the best solutions available all round and certainly better than netsweeper imo, particularly for performance. it is fully compliant with regards to reporting, however the issues are down to ease of doing so - Fastvue makes them just that little bit (a lot) easier certainly for DSLs who may not be particularly knowledgeable. It's not a lot of money; our Sophos XG330 with licensing and Fastvue on top still was cheaper than the "built in" solutions provided by many other ISPs including Smoothwall, netsweeper etc.

[m4rk]

It really depends what you mean by "reporting". Do you mean being able to log in and have a look at someone, searching for their name etc... Or do you mean more monitoring - if someone enters a keyword, it emails someone?

 

The prior, XG is pretty darn good. The latter, you'll struggle to find any filter that does this - it mostly seems to be the bailiwick of classroom monitoring software like Impero or AB Tutor.

 

Yeah, more monitoring. With Online Safety being a huge thing, and some of the promises that this software can do this or that. Its the odd thing of trying to be proactive which i don't think can be done with relation to students searching the internet while in school. In my mind as long as the filtering is blocking all the sites that it can from a global classification list, it would be after the event reports being generated that would be emailed to certain staff to follow up. We trialed Fastvue with our current UTM and i did like what it could to supplement the reporting direct from the UTM.

 

Its like the blocking of VPN's/hotspotting to bypass rules, the students have far more time than we do to look at circumventing things. There are times where technology cannot fix a person issue if there a looking to bypass rules that they should be following.

 

For those that do currently have XG can you show some images of the reports?

[TechMonkey]

it is fully compliant with regards to reporting, however the issues are down to ease of doing so - Fastvue makes them just that little bit (a lot) easier certainly for DSLs who may not be particularly knowledgeable. It's not a lot of money; our Sophos XG330 with licensing and Fastvue on top still was cheaper than the "built in" solutions provided by many other ISPs including Smoothwall, netsweeper etc.

 

Thank you for the reply. Can you give a rough idea of not a lot of money? I guess the value ultimately comes from, as you say, off loading the IT task of running reports and allowing DSLs or Pastoral staff to dip in when every they need.

[synaesthesia]

I think Wave9 will have my guts for garters if I started sharing costs on here, but it'll be worth giving someone like them a shout (plus not sure if their pricing for supplying just that system separate of an internet line is going to be different). Fastvue itself is a good couple of grand normally for a decent size secondary, but their deal halves that cost and then some.

[Uber22]

We are looking to update our Firewall/Filter later on this year from UTM 9 to XG, mainly to get the benefit of i am told, is the better reporting that XG offers, and that the product has matured since we had the XG hardware installed.

 

Our Head of Online safety was on a course and was told about/shown Netsweeper for filtering. Now the event may have been sponsored by Netseeper, so there could have been a bias towards the product. Is the filtering better on Netsweeper compared to XG based on your schools setup? Obviously there are many different options out there for firewall and filtering, just wondering on what thoughts you all had.

 

Can Netwseeper be used as a virtual appliance using both the onsite XG filtering as well as a cloud based filter too? Does Netsweeper/XG do live keyword alerts that can email staff to alert them that a specific word has been searched for?

 

Is there anything in the Ofsted documentation that has a list of preferred solutions that meets their requirements?

 

Looking for feedback or things that i can look into for our SLT.

 

Cheers

Mark

 

Hi Mark

 

We moved from the utm9 to the XG last year, if you do go for the XG worth while doing the virtual learning certificate from Sophos we also went for Sophos as we brought Intersept x as well. Gives a great overall solution.

 

Cost was about 6-7k plus vat plus av licenses that come with 3 year license for the xg as well plus vat of the top of my head

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi M4rk,

 

Here's my opinion. Bear in mind, we don't offer anything other than Sophos as our managed filtering and firewall platform..

 

The Sophos XG is great value for performance choice, it'll do most of what you need really well and our support service will certainly add a lot of value to you, particularly in the early days while you get to grips with it. Sophos Reporting is fully compliant, but it's an interesting issue and certainly an area for debate - we get more interest from customers who complain about their current reporting, and this is part of their reason for moving to Sophos. Having said that, some users do sometimes want more from the reporting, and FastVue can offer a 'better' experience, particularly for 'non-technical' users. We offer Fastvue on the same basis as XG, an annual charge, split over the term, which eases the pain a little, if you're determined to go that route. However, we work very closely with Sophos and there are plans to improve reporting and alerting in the next couple of releases. The other thing to consider is that it's probably worth looking at some dedicated monitoring solution, which, combined with an XG would probably cover all of your requirements.

 

The main (other) drivers for your decision, might be the amount of control and visibility you have of traffic and users on your network and their activity, which, as well as safeguarding, is very useful for troubleshooting other issues. As school's network and application landscape becomes more complex, my view is that on-premise (with appropriate training and support) is the better way to go. (cue incoming fire from hosted filtering providers!)

 

We can offer webex of both Sophos and Fastvue, formal Sophos admin training (for free) and unlimited help-desk as part of our offer.

 

The way that Vendors manage their resellers (long story) means that if you've already had a quote for an XG from a partner, it makes it more difficult for us to be engaged, but happy to have a chat about the features/benefits and idiosyncrasies of the XG platform any time : )

 

cheers

[woreilly]

If safeguarding is a major factor in any decision you make, give Shayne Grove of CoConnect a shout ([email protected]). He can talk you through various needs whether it be firewalls, filtering, broadband provision and monitoring software such as Senso.

[Andy_Cap]

We have had Sophos XG for a couple of years, and broadly speaking we're happy with the solution. However, reporting is woeful. Yes, as mentioned, you can produce reports with the desired information, but try and export that into a simple report is impossible. Generally, it results in a 7-page report when it could easily be 1-page, and this is just for reporting one category. Contrast this with the simple safeguarding report I used to receive when we had Lightspeed filtering, to get the same info from the XG i need to run 10 separate reports (I hope someone corrects me on this!).

 

We recently had an issue where our bandwidth was being maxed out for prolonged periods, neither myself, Sophos support (don't get me started on them!) or our sophos support partner could elicit the information from the logs which would pinpoint the issue.

 

We have recently started trialling Fastvue, and it certainly adds a new dimension to reporting. For instance, google will show on reports as that rather than gstatic.com or gvt1.com, thus making it much easier for the reader to interpret. I can also easily see bandwidth hoggers and a few other metrics. It's not cheap however. 3-year deal is 1k per annum all up front. 1-year deal is double that.

[KDW1987]

Hi Andy, Id be happy to help with the reports on the XG feel free to PM

[Uber22]

Hi Andy, Id be happy to help with the reports on the XG feel free to PM

 

Hi

 

I would be grateful of any info, I am like Andy the report side is a nightmare i am doing 10 different reports.

 

Thanks

[lmrogers]

Hi Andy, Id be happy to help with the reports on the XG feel free to PM

 

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but wondering if you can share the reports you generated for the safeguarding.

 

Cheers