It has a single pane of glass which allows me to manage all my VPCs from a single instance, managing all my firewalls from one place
Every single Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) has Sophos in front of it. I also use it for Outbound Gateways in my WorkSpaces environment.
How has it helped my organization?
Our company trusts Sophos without even seeing it, as it provides us comfortability while allowing for flexibility.
What is most valuable?
Its scaling capability.
Sophos has a single pane of glass which allows me to manage all my VPCs from a single instance, managing all my firewall from one place, which is huge for me. When you have multiple VPCs and multiple accounts, it becomes too cumbersome to use a product that you have to look at individually. With Sophos, I can look at one place and see everything: my logs, filters, firewall rules, etc.
What needs improvement?
I would like them to move from the Classic Load Balancer to the Network Load Balancer. This would make it easier to do certain things with Amazon. They are able to do some enhancements with Network Load Balancer that they are unable to do with Classic Load Balancer.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have never had a stability issue with Sophos. It self-heals.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have not run into a scalability issue since it is scalable past my license.
How is customer service and technical support?
I have had great technical support. The only issues that I have experienced with technical support are when I get a Tier 1 support person who knows about the on-premise product, not the AWS side of the product.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation and configuration through AWS is easy. They have cloud configuration templates, which are easy to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We originally purchased the solution through the AWS Marketplace. I started my proof of concept doing pay-as-you-go, then moved to a VAR for a 'Bring Your Own Licence' (BYOL) licensing model. The BYOL license still requires you to accept the terms of the AWS Marketplace to deploy.
It is easy to purchase through the AWS Marketplace. In addition, if you have a budget for the AWS Marketplace, then your purchases will appear on your regular Amazon bill, which makes things even easier.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I went and looked at Check Point eight years ago, because back then, I loved Check Point. They also weren't many solutions like this back then. AWS Marketplace did not even exist eight years ago!
After comparing Check Point and Sophos pricing, I questioned whether the decimal for Sophos was in the wrong spot. Sophos's competitors were so much higher in price.
Originally, cost sold me because Check Point and Sophos had the same features. Now, Sophos has surpassed Check Point's features.
What other advice do I have?
If you haven't tried it, do so.
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