BBQ Firewall vs Sophos Firewall (XGS)

BBQ Firewall

Model: Freemium (Free tier + paid licenses with lifetime option)

Sophos Firewall (XGS)

Model: Appliance plus subscription (varies by appliance and subscription bundle)

BBQ Firewall

• 7G/8G Request Filtering

  Regex-based pattern matching against incoming URIs, query strings, user agents, and referrers. Based on over a decade of refinement by Jeff Starr.

• SQL Injection Protection

  Blocks common SQL injection patterns including UNION, SELECT, eval(), and base64-encoded payloads.

• Directory Traversal Protection

  Catches path traversal attempts, null byte injection, and requests for sensitive system files.

• Bad Bot Blocking

  Filters known malicious user agents and referrer spam patterns.

• Request Method Scanning

  Checks all HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) against firewall rules.

• Customizable Patterns

  Add, edit, or remove firewall patterns to fine-tune protection for your specific site (Pro feature).

• Block Statistics

  Visual bar graphs showing hit counts per pattern to measure firewall effectiveness (Pro feature).

• Email Alerts

  Receive notifications when requests are blocked (Pro feature).

Sophos Firewall (XGS)

• Reverse-Proxy WAF

  Apache-based reverse proxy that protects published web servers against SQL injection, cross-site scripting, directory traversal, and other common web attacks.

• Form Hardening

  Signs and validates form fields to prevent manipulation of submitted web forms.

• URL Hardening

  Restricts accessible URLs based on the learned structure of the protected application.

• Cookie Signing

  Cryptographically signs cookies to detect and block tampering.

• Reverse-Proxy Authentication

  Adds basic or form-based authentication policies in front of published web servers via WAF rules.

• Antivirus Scanning

  Scans uploads and traffic to protected web servers for malware as part of Web Server Protection.