Barracuda Email Security Gateway Reviews

The solution is the first security layer for emails that come into our network, and we use it to filter all spam, phishing emails, and malware that come in via email.

We are now using the virtual appliance in our VMware environment.

In the past, we had a lot of problems from threats and malware that came into our network, directly from email. Users would receive the content and click on a malicious link or open a malicious attachment, and that caused us a lot of problems.

By choosing Barracuda as our solution for filtering, year by year we have seen a big improvement in our environment with a significant reduction in the number of threats. Consequently, we have fewer problems with users. In the past, users who clicked on this malicious content had to stop work for a long period while our support team helped them. We have almost 600 employees, and every month we had a lot of problems with that. Today we have good security maturity using this solution. It has reduced the risk in our environment. Employees lose less time due to malicious content on their computers. Barracuda has helped to secure the gateway.

The spam filtering, in particular, is very important for us. We have a large volume of emails each month, something like 200,000, and Barracuda filters about 85 percent of the spam, malware, and phishing that comes in. It prevents our users from receiving this content on their computers.

We have been using Barracuda Email Security Gateway for 15 years.

In our environment today, the stability is good.

The problems we have at times are not about the performance or availability, but about the quality of the detection for some threats. The model that we have does not have a sandbox resource, which other versions Barracuda offer. Sometimes we receive a phishing email that has a malicious link, for example. Even though it is an old threat, Barracuda can't detect it. Sometimes these messages are delivered to our users. This is a gap that we have identified.

Because we use the on-premises version, we don't have many options when it comes to scalability. But in our headquarters, we have the same solution working at the same time in two different data centers for availability.

We have plans to update to the next version, preferably the cloud version, where we can have more options for using the other resources and layers that Barracuda offers. We don't have access to those today on the version we have.

Everyone that I have contacted in their technical support is a professional. They always respond quickly and are very patient, for all the problems we have raised. The technical support really is very good. And today, that makes a real difference. Barracuda is a North American company, but they have support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are in a different time zone, but we always get support quickly.

Positive

In addition to Barracuda, we used an open-source solution from Linux.

It's not so hard to deploy. Barracuda has a huge forum on the internet with a lot of simple guides to follow. In our case, it was very simple to deploy the solution. Obviously, you need to have some knowledge about your network and the protocols, but every time that we need to use support they are always available very quickly to help us. But overall, the deployment is very simple.

The first time we deployed it, it took about three hours.

Ahead of deployment, we had some meetings with our IT team at our headquarters in Germany because we needed to create some rules in our network in Germany as well as here in Brazil. We chose the best resources for virtualization in our environment. We needed to design exactly how it would work: how Barracuda would receive emails and how we would address emails from our Microsoft Exchange before they went to Barracuda. We always used the Barracuda guidelines in the deployment process.

For our 600 users we have two people involved in the solution, a security guy and a network guy.

If we didn't have a solution like Barracuda in our environment, we would probably have a lot of problems that would directly impact our business. There would be employees who wouldn't be able to work because their machines were infected by threats after they opened email. If we calculate how many users used to be impacted in a year, and how much each one cost the company when not able to work, it would not be a good result. 

With this solution, we can prevent users and their work from being impacted and, consequently, reduce the impact to our business.

Barracuda has the best price. Every year we need to renew our license, and every year I need to compare Barracuda to two or three other players in the market. Barracuda always has a price that is 30 to 40 percent less than the other players' prices.

Last year we paid for the possibility of changing our hardware every three years. But now, because we changed the licensing model to a virtualization model, we don't need that. We just pay for the product and the support. There are two separate costs.

Over the last two years, I have looked at other solutions that might give us more ability to handle new threats. For example, I have looked at solutions that have a sandbox feature integrated into them. But, Barracuda has given us a good idea of what it proposes to do. They already have the solution that I am looking for, but because of costs, we haven't been able to deploy it.

The advantage of Barracuda is its availability. Barracuda provides really good performance and is able to handle tons of emails by the minute and by the hour. The con is that we still have critical threats coming into our environment and delivered to our users. When we compare it with other solutions, these other solutions can already detect those threats.

Barracuda's technology is the kind of technology that gives us a good balance among security, value, and user experience. It is not the best tool or technology on the market, but it does what it was developed to do. There are other possibilities, if you are willing to pay more. But Barracuda is the right solution for the problem in our environment.

A lot of companies pay for a good and comprehensive solution, but they usually only use 50 or 60 percent of what the solution offers. Barracuda is different. We use it 100 percent. I know what the Barracuda technology delivers for me and the value I get from it for what I pay and how I use it. It is that simple.

Barracuda Email Security Gateway is a good product, though it is a bit expensive. Barracuda Email Security Gateway's AI and threat detection methods are good, though the product doesn't provide much archiving features. I even recommend Barracuda Email Security Gateway to others, and if I have money, I will go for it, but when I am running a business, I need to look at what is good for business and make profits.

The downsides of the solution stem from the fact that it is an expensive product, and one may see too many false positives when using it, making them both areas where improvements are required.

I have been using Barracuda Email Security Gateway for three years.

It is a very stable solution.

In terms of scalability, I can say it is an okay solution. Barracuda Email Security Gateway offers good AI functionalities, but sometimes, in my company, we have seen a lot of false positives with the product.

I have experience interacting with the technical support team of Barracuda Email Security Gateway, and in my opinion, they are very efficient. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have previous experience with Fortinet. I decided to move from Fortinet to Barracuda since the latter provides me with the AI functionalities I need. My company tried the trial version offered by Barracuda, which is expensive, so we decided to look at Libraesva, which is an affordable product that has the AI functionalities I need. I think Libraesva is the best product in the market right now based on my experience and the product I currently use in my company.

The initial setup of the product was straightforward.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in half a day.

Barracuda Email Security Gateway is a bit expensive or costly product. I rate the price of Barracuda Email Security Gateway a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price.

During the evaluation process in my company, we considered Clearswift against Barracuda Email Security Gateway. My company found out that Clearswift also lacks AI functionalities, just like Fortinet, so we decided not to work with it.

With Barracuda Email Security Gateway, I feel that its AI functionalities are good, but there were too many false positives. Now I understand that it's more about hardfail than softfail, so you need to understand that certain configurations are not done properly. Even though certain emails don't pass the security check and Barracuda blocks it, it may get through and cause a bit of difficulty for the company.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

Our customers use this solution for screening.

Customer support is the solution's strongest point.

Some customers experience issues with integration.

Our organization has integrated this solution for the last six years.

I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

We have 12 customers using the solution.

I used the support ticket and the response was perfect.

Positive

Our engineer manages the implementation and maintenance.

The solution's pricing is exceedingly high, and it continues to increase. Many-a-time, customers do not renew the solution due to the high price. I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten.

Overall, I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our customers use the solution for security.

The solution can be deployed on-premise and in the cloud.

The most valuable feature of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is the complete capabilities it provides. Additionally, the phishing security and sandbox features are effective.

The solution should add automatic alerts to the mobile.

I have been using Barracuda Email Security Gateway for approximately 10 years.

The stability of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is great.

I rate the stability of Barracuda Email Security Gateway a ten out of ten.

The solution is used by more than 2,000 users.

I rate the scalability of Barracuda Email Security Gateway a nine out of ten. 

We do not have any regional support in my area. We are having to provide all of the support ourselves.

I have used other solutions in the past but switched because Barracuda Email Security Gateway has a lot more features and became the leader.

The initial setup of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is simple for the cloud base version. It takes approximately one hour for the deployment.

We use two people for the deployment of the solution.

The price of the solution should be reduced. The price in the USA is less than where we are. Our local distributor of the solution is manipulating the market. 

The price of the solution can range from €6,000 to €23,000. The on-premise version is expensive. However, if it is on the cloud the price is better.

I rate the price of Barracuda Email Security Gateway a six out of ten.

The price is approximately 30 percent more than others on the market.

If the solution is configured correctly then the maintenance is low. We are able to check the solution for our customers. We use two people for the maintenance if needed.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Barracuda Email Security Gateway an eight out of ten.

We are using Barracuda Email Security Gateway for ATP,  anti-spam, antivirus, and everything related to enabling flow.

The most valuable feature of the Barracuda Email Security Gateway is the ATP.

Barracuda Email Security Gateway can improve reporting and anti-spam. The anti-spam engine is not working well. We are seeing a lot of problems where spam is going through the gateway. Additionally, access privilege should be given to the IT support, because they don't have a lot of privileges. We are forced to give our IT support administrative access in order to clear and deliver emails and this should not be happening.

In the future, having a schedule reporting for quarantine for all users or for selected users, without reading the content of the message would be helpful.

I have been using Barracuda Email Security Gateway for approximately five years.

Barracuda Email Security Gateway is stable. We had issues with the on-premise version where they used to freeze from time to time, but with the cloud version, we have not had any issues.

Barracuda Email Security Gateway is a scalable solution.

We have approximately 500 people using the solution.

I have used the support from Barracuda Email Security Gateway.

I rate the support from Barracuda Email Security Gateway a three out of five.

Neutral

The initial setup of Barracuda Email Security Gateway took approximately two months to complete here in Lebanon. It was not an easy implementation.

We used Barracuda Email Security Gateway partners to complete the implementation of the solutions.

The price of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is approximately $17 per user annually.

We did not evaluate another solution prior to selecting Barracuda Email Security Gateway.

We chose the solution because it was high on the rating sites and some of my friends from other companies recommend it.

My advice to others is to make sure that their business use case is well optimized, to allow the solution to be set up in the right way.

We are a construction company and we make sure that the emails related to construction pass through the solution. Other companies, such as in marketing, will want to make sure that the marketing campaign passes through. We don't want any marketing campaigns to pass through. You need to see your business use case and your business needs, and you will have to adapt the solution.

I rate Barracuda Email Security Gateway an eight out of ten.

We use it ourselves as well as our customers. Our deployment is on-premise and also combined with cloud control. Cloud control is second-tier. The first tier is cloud control, the Barracuda and Barracuda cloud and then the email is passed to our Barracuda box which is on-premise. It's a gateway appliance, not a hardware box. It is normally used with Microsoft Exchange server but is also supported with Microsoft Office 365. We have 20 users but our customers have from 200 to 500 users.

They combined the cloud control and they have anti-phishing. There is link protection, which means when a link is in the email and it is similar to PayPal, for example, it gets flagged. The link protection checks the link and checks that it has been faked because it's not the original PayPal link. So when a link is not original then it's passed to Barracuda and checked in the sent box and when it's okay then it's opened. Otherwise, if it's malware then there's an alert which says, "That's a phishing attack and this is what you need to do."

We had a case where right before a link was redirected and there was no chance to ignore it. A few days ago there was a feature request to clean and redirect a link because it was a false positive. Let us say false positive in the link protection and there's no easy way to correct it.

We have been using Barracuda Email Security Gateway for five years.

It's stable. The only issue is when you do an email campaign with large file attachments, PDF and then email, the system slows down. That is a problem because the queue gets full and you have to correct it and delete those emails manually. 

The scalability is pretty granular. For example, 80p protection and cloud protection, link protection, anti-phishing, you can buy it all separately. You buy the original box and then you can buy afterward the additional security features.

Their support is very good. You get German and from Austria, but they also have English support world-wide. It is very good. With less response time. Short response time.

We previously used another solution. The complexity of the user interface was very complex and if you tried to make a configuration change, you end up searching for the feature and where you can edit. Also, security is a very good feature of the Barracuda Email Security Gateway. It has a per-user quarantine. It's very comfortable for the user to make his own white list or blacklist.

The setup is straightforward, it's very easy. For example, I want to change a feature but I didn't find it easily. There's a search option and you find the manual entry and you can make a conflict change. 

It is yearly licensing. They recently increased the price but the price-performance relation is still very good. Compared to Cisco IronPort, Barracuda is less expensive and the configuration is much simpler.

Try the Barracuda Email Essential Security Cloud Service. It's not expensive and implemented in half an hour.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The Anomaly-based spam detection is a very good feature of Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall, since it not only keeps track of the Anomalies, but also protects and notifies any illegitimate attachments, content, as well as the suspicious source from which an email is arriving/contained in the email.

Another important feature that organizations are looking for is the Integration with LDAP and Active Directory. This Device has a capability to easily integrate with the AD connected with the Exchange environment.

Based on a true case, we had been receiving emails from different countries on a bulk scale containing malware.

Before the installation of Barracuda, we were only able to identify the threat on the Endpoint level, but after installing the Spam Filter, it keeps track of each and every activity done in an email.

Two things:

1) The backup and recovery of the rule set stored in the device.

2) In denial of service condition, the events-per-second flow creates little jerk in term of delay.

When we are considering the enterprise security, we are interested in adding the additional controls in the environment. Barracuda device has a weak distinction‎ in its backup and recovery

Let me share a practical example: We have a Barracuda installed in a primary and backup location, it's difficult to include the exact configuration of a primary device to backup device, it has a time constraint ‎and effort based work. This area should be considered, as Barracuda has established their good appearance in the market.

Another area that should be considered for improvement ‎is the constant DoS attacks and bulk messages in the form of spam appearance on the device.

In a case of denial, condition on a ratio of 1200 to 1800 events per second would downgrade the performance of the device.

This was my practical role in testing the capability of this device, apart from the above two areas of improvement, this device has marvelous results in term of capacity, content, sources, and attachments.

I've used this solution for two years.

Not yet.

Not yet.

Best.

Lack of technical support and very delayed responses in the case of an incident.

Straightforward, even easy to install.

Pricing options should be considered by the Barracuda management, as per country market research. They should consider the economy and the country-technology ratio.

We have evaluated more than eight products of known vendors, and out of eight, we decided on this one.

I would suggest implementing Barracuda Spam, because this solution has a multi-factor threat analysis engine, which other products don't have.

The solution helps manage both inbound and outbound email. It prevents email phishing, spam attacks, and major attacks, securing email communication against various threats, including social engineering and compromised addresses. It has multiple features to prevent the user from being the victim of attacks.

Barracuda does not provide support for DMARC for outgoing emails. DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance.

For troubleshooting it at the core, We have to open a separate support to provide accessibility to the IT team, facilitating engineers to get into it and offer support. We have to establish a separate support tunnel at the customer site to make it accessible to the cloud, allowing the tagged engineers, potentially situated in another country, to provide remote support to the customers.

I have been using Barracuda Email Security Gateway for two and a half years.

The product is stable.

After three or four years, you can switch the hardware. When a new technology becomes available or the existing hardware needs an upgrade, they replace the customer's hardware box with a new one without additional charges. Barracuda does not charge extra for deploying the new boxes or for replacement. The best feature is their box is refreshed after some time according to their hardware renewal policies.

The solution is very scalable.

We deployed the solution on different company and customer sites.

We’ve around nine to ten customers using the solution.

FortiMail Security Gateway is far better than Barracuda Email Security Gateway.

Barracuda’s reporting feature allows you to locate particular logs and issues. The solution analyzes the issue if an email is not received at the recipient site. It also monitors email in the queue. FortiMail is difficult to handle from a reporting perspective. You have to dig deep into the logs to understand why a specific email is not being sent or received.

The initial setup and configuration are straightforward. It requires no MF records to be enabled. The platform provides two distinct interfaces for easy domain and IP address management with blacklisting and whitelisting capabilities.

To configure the system, you must set up SMTP servers, mail servers, and email addresses, enabling various security features such as anti-phishing, antivirus, content deployment, email reconstruction, etc. It is very simple to configure and use.

The solution is cheaper than FortiMail.

I have deployed one box on-site but also provided support for deployed boxes in many customer sites, Government sites, and private sectors.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.