What is our primary use case?
I use
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall for multiple functionalities. One function is an email security gateway. It also acts for network security protection, network security and threat protection, which includes IPS concepts, malware protections, zero-day threat detections, web filtering and URL categorization and application controller. Additionally, it works for secure remote access through VPN, and SD-WAN for multi-site connectivity, which provides intelligent traffic routing and optimization. There is a possibility of cloud integration as well. It also includes web application firewall capabilities, which takes care of web application security and provides email security services. However, this should be tied up with the email security gateway to the firewall because Barracuda has a separate product for email security gateway, which needs to be integrated with
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall. Then, this use case would work.
What is most valuable?
I use Barracuda CloudGen Firewall for multiple functionalities including email security gateway, network security, threat protection, IPS concepts, malware protections, zero-day threat detections, web filtering, URL categorization, application controller, secure remote access through VPN, SD-WAN for site connectivity, intelligent traffic routing, and cloud integration. Additionally, it includes web application firewall features and allows email security, requiring integration with a separate email security gateway product.
What needs improvement?
When I consider what I dislike about Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, there are a lot of competitors in the market. Next-gen firewalls offer a lot of capabilities. From a capability standpoint, competitors would allow you to configure use cases according to your needs and improvements. However, when I worked on Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, the option towards configuring the use cases was quite limited. The second point that I would highlight is the integration towards data points. The integration towards monitoring devices was quite complicated comparatively to other devices. Other vendors were mostly plug and play technology, but with respect to Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, we needed to involve a lot of manual effort in terms of those integrations.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Barracuda CloudGen Firewall for almost four to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
These kinds of stability issues happen in every tool. I will not blame or degrade Barracuda CloudGen Firewall in any means. The reason is that it was stable for us for a longer period of time. The support they provide during critical phases, such as the deployment of patches and other tasks, was adequate. During the deployment of patches and considering the uptime after the deployment of patches, the downtime and uptime are quite manageable for critical operations. They were on par on that stability portion.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is good from a scalable standpoint. From a rating standpoint, I would give it an eight.
How are customer service and support?
I do get a lot of use cases to contact the technical support. One is starting from the integration standpoint and starting from the initial deployment standpoint. The deployment strategy was quite complicated considering the nature of deployment strategy that we have chosen. During the integration phases, we do contact their technical support.
I'll rate the technical support at an average of seven. The reason is they are good at certain phases of the support, and not at certain phases of the support. When I say certain phases of the support, when you are buying the product and when you are deploying at the initial phase, they are quite supportive because they wanted to establish their mark in the organization. But once everything is done and once when we are trying to configure the use cases or probably the integration phase with other tools, the support we expect at that phase of the project is not bad, but quite average. There might be a lot of reasons behind it as well. I do understand that because the kind of customer service that we would have adopted, there are a lot of customer service options available, such as gold or silver. Probably the option that we have chosen as an organization might not be better. I am not sure. But during the integration phase, I would say it is quite average. On a scale of ten, I rate it seven.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment strategy of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall was easy. They offer two kinds of deployment strategies. One is an on-premises solution, and the other one is a cloud-based deployment solution. Both offerings were good. We took the options that were viable and that suited our needs. They provided multiple options in terms of the deployment. Additionally, they offer a kind of tech specialist in terms of supporting your deployment, which eases the job from an organization standpoint and in terms of writing the use cases. The deployment strategy was adequate.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have used Fortinet Firewall as a competitor. Fortinet was a different product with its own pros and cons. From an integration standpoint, when all these data points are more important in this current world, the only concern that I would note from Barracuda CloudGen Firewall standpoint is that during the integration standpoint, it was difficult for us to integrate with other monitoring tools in which we would monitor the events in a single centralized repository. The alternative option that we were using was Fortinet, but we stuck with Barracuda CloudGen Firewall due to its intelligence in terms of blocking the anomaly traffics and other capabilities.
What other advice do I have?
Maintenance is a common aspect of any product in which you maintain it on a regular basis irrespective of a patch update or anything. It is quite mandatory. Since the market is dynamic and due to evolving threats around the world, every vendor or every organization would be choosing a product based on the threat landscape and what is the threat for our suppliers. Barracuda is one of the suppliers for us. We need to stay on top of the threat and make sure that the maintenance is happening. Even if the product has reached the end of life, we need to understand till how much time that the particular product would get support from the vendor standpoint. If it is not, what is the other alternate option in terms of upgrading the product itself. Maintenance is a kind of bread and butter for every organization to take care of. My overall review rating for Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is seven out of ten.