Cisco Firepower 1000 Series vs. Sophos UTM

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The Cisco Firepower® 1000 Series for small to medium-size businesses and branch offices is a family of four threat-focused Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) security platforms designed to deliver business resiliency through superior threat defense. The vendor provides that they offers exceptional sustained performance when advanced threat functions are enabled. The 1000 Series’ throughput range addresses use cases from the small office, home office, remote branch office to the Internet edge. The…N/A
Sophos UTM
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Sophos UTM provides core firewall features, plus sandboxing and AI threat detection for advanced network security. It has customizable deployment options.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesSophos UTM
Editions & Modules
Firepower 1000
1,000-5,000
per appliance
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesSophos UTM
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Detailst2.small - $0.123 - Total / hr m3.medium - $0.417 - Total / hr m3.large - $0.883 - Total / hr m3.xlarge - $1.366 - Total / hr m3.2xlarge- $1.982 - Total / hr c3.large - $0.555 - Total / hr c3.xlarge - $1.11 - Total / hr c3.2xlarge - $1.72 - Total / hr c3.4xlarge - $2.59 - Total / hr c3.8xlarge - $3.68 - Total / hr c4.large - $0.55 - Total / hr c4.xlarge - $1.099 - Total / hr c4.2xlarge - $1.698 - Total / hr c4.4xlarge - $2.546 - Total / hr c4.8xlarge - $3.841 - Total / hr m4.large - $0.868 - Total / hr m4.xlarge - $1.365 - Total / hr m4.2xlarge- $1.931 - Total / hr
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesSophos UTM
Features
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesSophos UTM
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series
8.3
Ratings
4% below category average
Sophos UTM
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.80 Ratings00 Ratings
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Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesSophos UTM
Small Businesses
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Score 9.9 out of 10
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Score 9.9 out of 10
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Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.6 out of 10
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Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesSophos UTM
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Firepower 1000 SeriesSophos UTM
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco Firepower 1000 Series is best and required for every organization. It will give you more control [over] incoming and outgoing traffic and more visibility on user traffic. Sandbox is one of the best features [that] provides you [with] deep-level packet scans and gives you multilayered security. It can stop any malware attack on your organization. The support of Cisco is very fast and lots of documentation are available on the Cisco website.
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Sophos is a very powerful anti-virus program that can be used in small and big businesses. Sophos has multiple features that can be customized to fit IT and business needs. Sophos would be less appropriate for IT personnel that do not have the time or knowledge of implementing the problem. The setup of its policies can be very complex.
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Pros
  • My organization is all Cisco and wants to stay in the Cisco life cycle, Firepower 1000 series is great for small to medium-size office.
  • Very robust enterprise-grade security solution with updated threat features to handle any current and upcoming threats. The solution is backed by Cisco to ensure constant security updates. Integrated AnyConnect remote client VPN is a big plus to allow for secure remote workers access. Easier to set up a site to site VPN due to the large user base and case studies published on integrating to other manufacturer solutions.
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  • Firewall Protection. The protection is unmatched, setup it a little daunting, but once set up it pretty much runs itself.
  • Site-to-site VPN. Super easy to deploy so we are able to network all our sites together.
  • The DHCP server function is actually really nice, I prefer using it over the traditional way of using a DC for DHCP.
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Cons
  • ACLS in gui are PIA cant see object details
  • Objects in ACLs dont show IP addresses
  • Have to renames every object to name+ip to make acl GUI useable
  • Speed to data can use improvement.
  • Health warnings should allow you to resolve you have to dig n search in some cases.
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  • Better standard support, it used to be great, now, not so much (for paying customers, that only aquired the Hardware)
  • Better wireless solution, there is always room for that, now that everybody needs robust wifi, even at home!
  • Faster and more robust wireless Access Points, or different vendor-like compatibility.
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Likelihood to Renew
It is quite good, robust and reliable but not always so easy to manage and configure. The tools could be improved and the price is not low for an entry level firewall
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No answers on this topic
Usability
Firepowers are secure, reliable, central management and configuration is easy and they fit in well with our existing Cisco infrastructure. Good feature set and support. Good management and control with chassis manager and central control with additional Firepower Management Centre.
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The interface is no non-sense and easy to understand. No need for any consultants to help implement this solution. The performance is consistent and solid. Paired with a good amount of firmware and definitions, it's hard to find any fault in this product. It's interoperability with other Sophos products make a compelling argument to invest in more Sophos products.
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Reliability and Availability
At the beginining there were some bugs
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Great performance even on the lower end model of the series. You can push a lot of traffic through these devices without much performance impact. If you decide you want to inspect encrypted traffic however, you may take a big hit on the cpu and memory of the box, but they still manage to keep up even with all the bells and whistles turned on.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Where's the 0 option... It sucks if you do not have an active Cisco contract. From my experience, trying to get the original batch of encryption licenses added was a nightmare and without it the firewalls are not secure. Just include basic security by default and don't require a registration.
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I find the support fair. The wait can be frustrating when dealing with fire. The pandemic has not helped with this. Although the wait can be long, the support reps are knowledgeable and was able to resolve the issues I was facing.
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Implementation Rating
Utilize the new FMC cloud which is available in Cisco Defense Orchestrator.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
We use both devices for different purposes. Both have their benefits, which we try to bring to best use in our environment. This makes it hard to compare them. All I can say for sure is, that they work quite well as a team, each leveling out the others flaws.
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The Linksys was a router, so the comparison isn't quite the same, but I previously worked on a SonicWall firewall. The setup is by far easier on the Sophos UTM device. That alone makes it enticing, but thrown multiple services options such as email and web filtering, endpoint support, seamless WAP and RED device integration and it wasn't a very hard decision to make.
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Return on Investment
  • This product has kept hackers, malware, and viruses at bay for large hospitals and small alike. Very valuable data can reside behind this so long as it is set up correctly.
  • The value is great with SnortV3. Very versatile if you need a hybrid scenario with Multi-Cloud support.
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  • Sophos has provided a secure Firewall for us.
  • Integration with Sophos Central makes it easier to manage both.
  • Site to site VPN Failover groups has caused more trouble than it's worth.
  • High availability doesn't recognize when you are restarting for an update.
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ScreenShots