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Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Email Security Ga...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (2nd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
Cisco Secure Email
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)
 

Featured Reviews

WalidChowdhury - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 21, 2023
Robust email protection with advanced features such as effective spam filtering, virus and malware defense, phishing protection and high scalability
Our customer faced a significant challenge with spam, leading to increased expenses. The complexity of their email infrastructure added to the issue, with some clients using Microsoft Exchange, others relying on different systems, and some operating on Linux platforms. To address this, we…
Muhammad Naeemuddoja - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 14, 2023
Robust email security with advanced threat protection, seamless integration with the Cisco security ecosystem, and flexibility in deployment options
While Cisco is a preferred choice for larger enterprises, its products, especially in the realm of security, tend to be more expensive due to their advanced features. Many organizations commonly rely on Microsoft Outlook for their email needs. Transitioning to Cisco security solutions, including Cisco SecureMail, requires careful consideration and typically involves a learning stage. The decision between traditional hardware and virtual machines (VMs) for deploying solutions like Cisco Secure Mail often depends on financial considerations. VMs are generally more cost-effective compared to dedicated hardware, leading industries to increasingly favor VM deployment. The choice is particularly relevant when the server's capabilities are robust enough to meet organizational needs. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The feature that sets Barracuda apart from other solutions is the Office 365 cloud-to-cloud backup."
"We have found some of the valuable features to be how easy the solution is to configure, the graphic support, and the intuitive dashboard."
"It can effectively combat phishing attacks, block spam, provide confirmation, and ensure operational manageability with a strong focus on product stability."
"It is an excellent, intelligent solution that provides maximum security from email attacks."
"The security protection is the best and it's GUI is user-friendly."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use."
"This appliance has helped in that we now eliminate the thousands of scams, spam, and malware emails that are destined for our users."
"The client has the option to blacklist or whitelist any email address or domain based on the sender and recipient filters. If they want, they can restrict any IP addresses so email won't be received from those IP addresses."
"It has the ability to tell us, after an email has been delivered, where else it went, once it got inside. Maybe it's something we wanted it to stop and it didn't stop it, but it notified us later that it was something that it should have stopped. It can give us a trajectory of all the other places that it went internally and it can tell us what files were transferred as well."
"The advanced phishing protection and the integration with the awareness tool that Cisco has embedded into the solution to bring awareness to the customers about the dangers of phishing attacks and other things that come from email are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Gateway has allowed our users to be able to concentrate on the emails that they do receive. Previously, our users had to deal with nine million additional emails across the organization, which is nearly 1,000 emails per user to have to deal with a month. That's a massive amount for our staff to deal with and probably several hours of their time. We have a lot of clinical staff, being a hospital. We want to make our staff as productive as possible. By removing a lot of that spam and phishing type emails, this allows them to do their job."
"It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. There are a lot of things that you cannot handle on the graphic interface, like message filters. For this, you need to go to a lower level where you have more power, like command line interface. So, this solution has the best of both worlds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles. It is more practical with access to most features that you can configure."
"Spam controls are excellent because they are a powerful feature that operates almost effortlessly."
"The tool has a DLP solution which we can implement. Its database is updated regularly."
"The strong point of the solution is that we hardly get any spam emails because of Cisco Secure Email."
 

Cons

"There are some times when legit emails are trapped on Barracuda and we are unable to get that information unless we actually log on to the network to find out."
"Two improvements that are needed include an enhancement in the proxy feature, as well as the ability to more fully automate patches and updates."
"There is room for improvement in the speed of the interface, specifically the cloud interface, is a bit slow."
"My customers were sending OPT bulk emails and Barracuda Email Security Gateway was not able to handle it. We have to go with another different solution, such FortiMail for the task. We are implementing these combinations of the Barracuda and FortiGate, for email security. The FortiGate FortiMail security gateway we use to send only the bulk email, not for receiving emails."
"Artificial intelligence improvement could be used to help block spam and phishing mail that is directly delivered to users."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway should add auto-remediation to improve the solution. Additionally, there are times when we have false positives and our general emails get locked, we have mentioned this to Barracuda."
"I would like to have better integration with third-party archival vendors to facilitate moving data in and out."
"The dashboard's UI could be improved to make changes to the blocklist."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"Cisco Secure Email can be improved from the administrator's point of view. Usually, you have to work with different areas, and they can try to make it easy for the administrator to use different functions."
"The user interface needs some improvement to become more user-friendly. The graphics could be better. It's designed more for a technical user rather than a business user."
"I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find. People come to me all the time, saying, "This email didn't get through." Then, I go searching and don't find it on the first search. You have to think about alternative searches. I don't know if there is an easier way that they could help to find things. I don't know how they could simplify it, because now everybody else is using the cloud and everything is coming from Office 365, or whatever. It is just not the same environment from years ago where everybody had their own server and you could search easier."
"Typically, in a phishing email, they try to use a name everybody's going to recognize, like the CEO's name or the CFO's name... With this appliance, the way it's designed at the moment, for us to really stop that with any level of confidence, we have to build a dictionary of all the names of the people we want it to check, and all the ways they could be spelled. My name would be in there as Phillip Collins, Phillip D. Collins, Phillip Dean Collins, Phil Collins, Phil D. Collins. There could be eight or 10 variations of my name that we'd have to put in the dictionary. There's no artificial intelligence to say "Phil Collins" could be all these other things, and to stop phishing from coming through in that way."
"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost."
"I would like to see sandboxing for email, where suspicious emails received by the system are analyzed through online services."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an annual license required for this solution."
"We paid for an annual license."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is a cost-effective solution."
"This is one of the major points for integrating this solution in any organization. Barracuda Email Security Gateway needs to make it a bit more tolerable for customers because it is increasing every year. They should create a plan for reducing the cost."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is an affordable solution that caters to small, midsize, and high-end businesses with great revenue."
"The licensing cost is competitive, it's not too high and not too low."
"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."
"For overall value and cost, Barracuda came in as most appropriate, price as well as services provided. In terms of price, it's average . It's not the most expensive, it's not the least expensive but it works well."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"I rate the product price as six on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a very expensive tool."
"You're going to get what you pay for. If you're not willing to pay the price of Cisco, you're not going to get a product that's as good as Cisco. I don't think Cisco is overpriced, because for the last two years I've been comparing it to Microsoft and Cisco has been cheaper and given us more features."
"It's adapted to the market. It's similar to other vendors. We at least don't have many problems regarding that because Cisco is adaptable on that side. When we present the solutions to the customers, we tend to achieve the goals that the customer has in terms of the budget for such implementations."
"It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
"Cisco Secure Email and the support are priced well. It's not cheap, but there are other solutions that offer less and cost so much. For example, Microsoft is more expensive than Cisco."
"As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"I don't have the insights into it, but compared to different products, it seems to have a medium level of pricing."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Email Gateway (SEG) solutions are best for your needs.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

KK
Dec 12, 2022
Dec 12, 2022
Have you considered Proofpoint Email Protection? It’s not one of the options you listed, but I recommend Proofpoint for advanced email security to everyone. Proofpoint Email Protection defends organizations against advanced email-borne threats, including spear phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. Proofpoint provides inbound and outbound email filtering with industry-leading ac...
2 out of 7 answers
SimonClark - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 20, 2022
Top brands don't mean best or most cost-effective. My advice is to look a bit further before you make a decision. Evidence suggests that most top brands are pretty good at detecting and blocking malicious attachments, best case letting through 1%, but can be worse than 50% when it comes to detecting malicious links in the text of the email.  There are numerous less well-known vendors with lower-cost AI-based solutions that have a far better success rate, also providing employees the ability to report on suspect emails which auto-removes them from other staff members' inboxes until they have been properly assessed. Some will provide a visual risk score to the recipient to give them advance warning to be more cautious. Combining this kind of capability with staff awareness products keeps your vendor list lower and further improves efficiency. For around £2 GBP per user per month (less than $3) we provide different vendors depending upon the customer's environment but provided as a managed service. This allows our customers to outsource some of the monitoring and day-to-day management, spread the cost on a monthly basis, and flex how many licences they need on a monthly basis too i.e. if you drop 20 users don't pay for them but if you increase by 20 you don't need complex co-termination and pro rata discussions.
DM
Jun 21, 2022
I only can recommend Cisco because it´s the only one with which I'd worked enough. I think it is powerful enough and has a lot of possibilities. In addition, to a great support team. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
50%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Government
4%
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway should include ATP in the next release.
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Email?
Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Email?
The pricing for Cisco Email Security Appliance involves recurring costs for licenses based on the contracted time frame, such as one year, three years, or five years. Renewals are required after th...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
The discontinuation of physical hardware solutions is a significant area for improvement in the Cisco Email Security Appliance. This decision has posed challenges as virtual appliances are now the ...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall, Barracuda Sentinel
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Evolution Recruitment Solutions, Evans Delivery Company, Osoyoos Credit Union, Synovis Life Technologies, Camden County Technical Schools, DEK, Evans Delivery Company, Colgate Rochester Crozer, Hemmera, South Carolina Heart Center, Ferma Corporation, Major League Baseball (MLB), Healy Brothers Automotive Group
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.