The UK-based PC PRO Excellence Awards are held annually to celebrate the best manufacturers and the best products available.

Whilst the ‘Manufacturer of the Year’ awards are selected by PC PRO readers, the ‘Product of the Year’ awards are selected from the hundreds of products that have been reviewed by the PC PRO team, together with their sister brands, IT Pro and Expert Reviews. We’re told the voting in these categories can involve hot debates within the editorial team, and only the standout products are selected.

The Sophos XG 230 (Rev.2) earned the top spot in the prestigious ‘Business Hardware of the Year’ category, competing with over a hundred other business-focused products.

IT Pro reviewed the XG 230, including the initial setup with Sophos Firewall OS (SFOS), earlier this year, when it was awarded an Editor’s Choice 5-Star rating.

The review highlights the following features:

• Flexible connectivity – built-in and add-on via Flexi Port modules
• Power redundancy option and failover via built-in bypass ports
• Ease of setup using the installation wizard
• Visibility provided by the Control Centre
• Zone-based security policies
• Extensive Web filtering categorization options
• Threat detection using Sophos Sandstorm (now part of Zero-Day Protection)
• Integration in Sophos Central, both for management, and cross-product threat detection and mitigation via the Sophos Security Heartbeat™.

Dave Mitchell, who conducted the review, was a key advocate for the Sophos win, describing our product as follows:

Sophos’ XG 230 Rev.2 impressed us mightily as this no-compromises gateway appliance is a cinch to deploy and offers a remarkable range of security measures for the price. A huge firewall throughput means it can easily keep up with a heavy demand and total integration with the Sophos Central cloud service adds extra levels of versatility.

You can read Dave Mitchell’s full review on the IT Pro website.

This review was conducted prior to the release of our new XGS Series hardware range, which offer all of the above features and many more.

Source: Sophos