Barracuda CloudGen Firewall Reviews

Our primary use case is protecting companies from hackers. Everyone is vulnerable and it's a challenge to protect everything. 

Improvement should focus on fixing vulnerabilities. One of the issues with firewalls is that they don't dynamically update. If you experience an attack it can take a very long time to find a solution. It's the same issue with the Microsoft operating system which has all kinds of vulnerabilities and they put patches on to fix them. Firewalls are similar. 

It would be great to see a sharing of information but this is unlikely to happen. Everything in the industry is proprietary. It's similar to Dell computers, everything is proprietary and Barracuda is the same. They want to protect what they're doing with the firewall and so they don't want you to know how they work. For the user, there are tech people like network managers and security managers who won't share information about their vulnerabilities so you'll never know what's wrong. You know enough to use the product but not enough to enable you to solve the real security issues. 

At some point, they'll probably need to develop frequency hopping to make hacking more difficult. 

Scalability is always good because the company wants to be able to handle large customers. They can deal with both small businesses and massive companies. The ones I've worked for had thousands of computers. There are people still running Windows XP and Windows 10 and then you've got Mac users and cell phone connections. Scalability is there but it's a lot of work.

Technical support is quite poor, similar to Cisco. Technical staff are usually people that they've hired who are generally inexperienced. 

Initial setup is very complex and the firewalls can sometimes be unpredictable. A lot of this is connected to encryption. Every bit of encryption slows things down but if it's too light there's not enough protection. 

All the firewall companies such as Fortinet tend to go after certain markets. All the highly regulated industries such as banking and security exchanges have to follow a lot of rules. Firewalls can't provide them with all their specific needs. A lot of our time is spent trying to fix their problems. Our problem is that they all run different operating systems so it's difficult for them to do a good job at protection.

In another area, the more variation in equipment creates more issues. If you had a thousand computers, all identical and doing the same job, you wouldn't have as much trouble as you do when there are a thousand computers with 500 variations all doing different things; document control, engineering, facilities management and the most difficult to deal with is material management. 

I would rate this product a five out of 10. 

Our primary use case for this solution is data protection.

The features I find most valuable is the VPN and the fact that we can apply our policies to the program. 

I would like to see a more user-friendly dashboard and an easier interface. 

I am very satisfied with how stable the solution is.

The program is definitely scalable.

We used Linux software before for the firewall but in the end, we chose this solution because it seemed to be the best for our company.

I did the installation in cooperation with my consultant and the deployment took about six to seven hours. 

The program is not too expensive. We pay around 150 to 200 Euros per year and there are no additional costs.

My advice to others would be to get familiar with firewalls logic. My rating for this program is 9.5 out of ten. Not a ten because I would like better technical support and a better interface. 

Our primary use case for this solution is to replace vendor-managed MPLS with in-house managed SD-WAN.

This solution has allowed us to use multiple commodity internet connections at our locations, added greater control of internet usage, and enhanced security.

The most valuable features are SD-WAN, URL filtering, IPS, and virus scanning.

The technical manuals, at times, have images that don't match the actual screens and are not always as clear as they could be on the configuration. This requires a call to their very good support department.

Technical support is very good.

Our primary use case of this solution is to provide services with a firewall to our clients. We mostly deploy internet gateways in their data centers.

We do not have this product installed in our environment.

The most valuable feature for us is the ability to offer firewall support to our clients.

We would like to see a solution that is focused on container deployment, which is very important right now. Clients are looking at those kinds of deployment more often, so it has become a center of focus.

This is a very stable solution. Once you have deployed it following the criteria, you almost never have to touch it.

The scalability depends on the deployment and it depends on the use case.

The installation is straightforward if you know what you are doing, but the vendor provides many resources for clients. It is up to the client and the provider to learn how to use the tool correctly.

The length of time for deployment depends on the use case and the client, but we have worked on deployments for between two and four months. That is the approximate timeframe.

In the Latin market, it tends to be a little expensive. However, it is our job to show the value of the solution so that the client can understand the return on investment.

In general, it tends to be cheaper than most solutions. I would say that it is cost effective.

We suggest to our clients that training is the first thing they should do after deployment. This is because it is very important that they know how to operate and maintain the product. It allows them to be self-sufficient when it comes to maintenance.

If you have sufficient knowledge then you can deploy and maintain the solution with no issues.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are mostly using it for spam filtering. We have had great success with Barracuda Cloud, using it to block any spam before it even gets to our on-premise devices. I also had the same results occur at my previous place of employment, so I have had a lot of success with the product.

If we didn't have it, then we would be spammed constantly. It has cut down the amount of emails that get through to our end users.

• It is easy to use.
• It actually works really well. 
• Barracuda is very prompt at blocking any new spam which comes out.

To start working with spam, it takes a while because the product has to see that multiple emails are coming in with all the spam. If it could reduce that amount of time, then we would reduce the amount of users who are receiving spam.

It is very stable. We haven't had any issues with it on the cloud or even on-premise. On-premise, we have two of them that are set to high availability, and they have never gone down.

It is very scalable, especially with its cloud feature. It doesn't matter how many users I have on my end, and we are a shop of about 800 to 1000 users. So, it is working perfectly.

I have called in a few times to the tech support, and they have been on top of it. If I have a problem, they respond immediately to help. Whomever I speak with is very knowledgeable about the product. Therefore, I have not had any issues with the technical support.

The initial setup for on-premise was an easy setup. 

I wasn't part of the evaluation process.

Give Barracuda a try because it has been successful in my experience. The product is foolproof. It has done everything that we have needed with the amount of email that we receive, and it handles it quite well. So, I would give it a ten out of ten and  recommend it to anyone for use.

I have used the on-premise and Barracuda Cloud versions of the product. We are only now looking into AWS.

They are already pushing it out to the cloud and putting another layer in front of it before it even gets to me.

We use it for security.

We enjoy the reduction in terms of labor.

• The brand
• Agility
• Price per performance

The usability for the administrator's experience needs improvement. My system administrator has some questions about its overall connectivity and flexibility.

I would like to see UI improvements in the next release.

It is very stable, but I don't think we stress it to its capabilities.

The scalability meets our needs. It should scale to our short term growth needs without a problem, as our environment is fairly small. We are a small to midsize business.

The technical support is good.

The AWS integration and configuration was easy to use and set up.

Purchasing through AWS Marketplace was good. We did it because it was easy.

It would be nice if the pricing and licensing offered for less.

I would recommend to check out this product.

We have used other versions besides AWS, and we are still comparing them.

Barracuda X200 is the edge of our home system for VPN traffic. It provides IPsec to two other sites, including remote VPN access for users who are off the network.

• Inbound and outbound traffic analysis
• Rule creation wizard
• GUI portal
• Quality online support

The unit seems to be handling our 150MB pipe okay, but logger refresh leaves a bit to be desired.

A rule for email announcements, when configured hits occur, would be a great improvement for a more efficient experience.

We replaced an underperforming, continually locking Cisco RV130 unit. However, the two are not an "apples to apples" comparison.

Much quicker deployment, ease of troubleshooting and better cost compared to our previous solution.

• Ease of use and troubleshooting.
• Very easy to quickly identify issues and resolve them.
• Add-on features such as Virus Scanning, ATP, and web filtering - These features add another level of protection and block malware before it gets to the end user. 
• Single device, multiple functions - I do not need to purchase a web application firewall, a proxy server, a VPN device and so many others because these are all built in to this one device.
• TINA (Transport Independent Network Architecture) VPN features - Allows automatic VPN configuration with little or no input from the tech. Drag and drop lines between Barracuda units and the VPN is automatically built.

Can be underpowered if you choose to use all available add-on features. Just be careful when sizing your unit. Make sure you take into account what features you will be turning on, and work with your sales rep to get the model that can handle that load.

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

I would rate the technical support nine out of 10.

This product was much easier to deploy, manage and troubleshoot than my previous solution.

Straightforward, very intuitive.

Pricing is good. Licensing is pretty much automatic if using Control Center.

Cisco and Fortinet.

I rate it a nine out of 10 due to its ease of installation, great technical support, very intuitive user interface, and numerous features.

Go through the training course.

We use it for priority level security, to manage single sign-on applications and user base policy from a single firewall device. We use it for SSL inspection, for SSL site-to-site, for point-to-site, and for user base policy allocation.

I'm a network and cyber security consultant. This is not only for my offices, I have deployed it for many large enterprises where customers are remotely accessing their applications. We can define user application-level access, so our customers can work anytime from anywhere.

Live monitoring of what is happening inside and with the interfaces, either ingress or egress - this is a good feature of the device.

Secondly, most people use enterprise applications remotely, and there is no license for SSL VPN, or in other words point-to-site. There is no limit. On other devices there is a specific limit and you have to pay per use for SSL VPN.

Single sign-on is also good. If you are accessing your corporate firewall from your home, during that time there is an integration with the AD. You can use your AD's password to access your SSL VPN. It's not like if you buy a traditional SSL VPN. You have to define a specific password for your remote client application but there is no requirement of defining a specific password - which you would have to request from your admin - or to buy a token which can generate a password for your integration. You can directly integrate with your AD. If you change your password on the AD side, your client-to-VPN password also gets changed. You can integrate all your passwords from a single console. The admin doesn't has to change your password, it's a single sign-on.

It's a little bit complex in terms of handling. If you implement a change, there is a specific point where you have to commit it. It's not like you just push a button and it's always committed. If you don't know to check whether your commit command has been executed or not... that is something Barracuda needs to work on.

Secondly, when you do any commit, it locks your next access. If you are making a change to the device, from the security standpoint it's fine, but from the admin side it's not good. When you make changes, after each and every one it becomes locked.

It's really a good and stable product. I have worked with multiple firewall products and I can say that this is really very robust, good hardware. It's also good on the cloud side. I have deployed it on both sides, either on the public cloud or a virtual space, or a physical environment.

No scalability issues at all. When you buy this product it gives you multiple options: What can the maximum number of employees be, what can the number of concurrent users be. It's really good, there is no problem with the usability.

One of the most important parts is that there is auto-upgrade of the hardware every fourth year.

I would say technical support is lacking. They don't have strong technical support; their abilities are not so good. The support is not fabulous, it's okay. They need to improve their support.

I have used Cisco, Fortinet, Check Point, Palo Alto, Sophos Cyberoam, Dell SonicWall, and Juniper (both SRX and NetScreen).

One of the reasons I switched to Barracuda is that I was looking for real-time monitoring and Barracuda is good for that.

Secondly, SD-WAN. The first time I used this a question which occurred to me was regarding software-defined WAN technology. I wanted to go to a software-defined WAN and Barracuda have a specific protocol called TINA (Transport Independent Network Architecture). You can create a master policy over the internet and it allows you to do Quality of Services on top of it. It's really helpful for me.

When I saw that this box comes with software-defined WAN technology, along with all the firewall options, the specific user-level deep monitoring and real-time monitoring, that made me more curious about it.

Initially, it's complex when no one is familiar with it. The first time you use it, it is a really complex solution.

We have spent a good amount of time to "get in" to this box.

Pricing and licensing are fine. It's worth the value because if I buy any other product, every four years I have to replace my hardware. But with Barracuda I get a free hardware upgrade. Today I'm using Xbox. After four years I can take another Xbox or a Ybox.

When I initially started using it I was just an end-user, a technical consultant. And one of my customers said to me, "I want these and these features." I searched a number of products with respect to the customer's requirements and we chose Barracuda. I then signed on to be an OEM partner with Barracuda, about four years ago.

It's good to go with Barracuda. If your work is only on the internet, you can go with this product. If you want to create your own MPLS network, or you are more focused on application performance over the internet, you can go with Barracuda.

I would not blindly say go with any given product because there are multiple factors to consider. For example, there is no license for SSL. When you have a greater number of remote users, and you don't know what kind of scalability you will need, that is another thing. If you have multiple offices, all inter-connected via the internet, you want a single management console through which you can manage all you firewalls. In that case, Barracuda could be a good option.

If you want to buy a product which can challenge the industry-recognized leaders, like Palo Alto or Check Point, you should consider this product.

I rated it at nine out of 10. It's not a 10 because of their training - it takes a long time to understand this product. Also, it locks after each and every change, which is problematic. Also, when you login from some sources, there is no feature which can log you out after a certain timeout.

We implement it for customers. We have some customers in Mexico who need that kind of technology. We sell that technology to them. Some of our customers have experience working with previous versions of Barracuda; they ask us to implement that kind of device. We have certification with Barracuda, we have certification with some other brands.

Barracuda has a very simple interface, very good security, all the features of the best firewalls in the market, but with a very friendly interface.

Something that we've seen that Barracuda, and some other brands also, have. When you program the firewall to detect certain kinds of attacks, Barracuda can detect that kind of attack and automatically insulate, or remove, or encapsulate the very specific IP, if it's internal. And if it's external it just blocks any kind of communication with that specific IP. If you want, Barracuda will warn the security team. If you allow, or release, that IP, it will continue communication. If not, it will block it forever, or until you release it.

Internally, we'll remove it until you release also, but we allow the IT team to review what is happening with that particular piece of equipment, a computer, a laptop, a server, any kind of device into which a "back door" can be opened or through which they're trying to get some information. Barracuda can help with that. That is one of the most important features we've seen with Barracuda.

I cannot mention the name, due to the NDA that we have signed with a financial company, a financial entity. But we implemented Barracuda with them. Right now they are monitoring all the information that their employees are managing. If an employee tries to get or move a file that is not permitted to them - for example if he wants to copy it to a USB - he will not have the right to do that, because Barracuda manages who has the right to copy, and what you copy to a USB. The USB is encrypted with a specific code from Barracuda and will only be decrypted into any other laptop in the company if they allow it to see it.

Even in the network, a feature of Windows is to see how you are sharing files. Barracuda can help you to monitor how you are moving files.

When you are sending information to an external email address, Barracuda can warn you when you are trying to access a private or personal email, or trying to upload information; it's not allowing you to do that. That was the biggest feature that that financial entity admired in Barracuda, among others.

Easy integration with some other systems like LDAP or Active Directory to manage other permissions and the division of external access and internal access.

The problem we found was with the issue of configuration. Our engineers are working with some other brands, they have knowledge of other brands. With Barracuda it's a matter of translating the comments. So maybe one company calls something a "black box" and with Barracuda they call "black" "dark." So it's a matter of getting to know it.

We had only one issue. But after we did the analysis and we escalated the issue with the Barracuda service desk, the issue was shown to be coming from a failure in a RAM memory card in the Barracuda. That issue was detected by technical support. They sent a replacement, it solved the issue, and we continued working.

No issues with scalability.

When we buy the device for the customer, we buy the Enhanced Support, the extended support contract, 24/7 support. When we write in with issues we get very quick answers from technical support. The communication with their engineers is very fluid.

We had a couple of sessions at one point; the engineer working with us never put down the phone. When her work hours were supposed to end, we changed to another engineer, but not immediately. The first one didn't say goodbye immediately. She stayed behind for 30 minutes to explain and transfer the case to the other engineer and we completed the test with the other engineer. He detected the failure and created the RMA to change the problematic piece and that was it.

We are not entirely switching to Barracuda. We want to, but we are not because before we started selling Barracuda we had invested in other brands and, obviously, in the accounting and in reality, we need to complete using them. But yes, we are thinking of moving to Barracuda after we have had it for three years. We want to show our customers that we are using the technology we are selling.

The firewall we are using in our company is Palo Alto, it's a very good firewall, a very robust firewall as well. But when we are doing the comparison with Barracuda we can see it's not the same. The biggest difference between the brands is pricing.

This is something that I have never specifically asked my technical team. The simple answer is that they have told me there is no problem. It's very easy. We only need to know the names of the commented bits, because there are some comments where the names are changing.

We compared Barracuda with Cisco. We compared Barracuda, at that time, with Fortinet. When we did the comparison we felt Cisco was another great product. But the difference in this case, what made Barracuda the winner, was the price, at that time.

We are an information technology service provider in telecommunications. We can supply any kind of device, for a datacenter, and contact centers, for our customers. We are using technology from Dell, HPE, Palo Alto, Barracuda, and some other brands to implement technology solutions for customers.

Our principal service is a managed service, information security services, or cyber security. We sell those services to different customers in Mexico. We are serving Central America and some other countries in Latin America.

I give Barracuda an eight out of 10 because they can still give more to the end-user. They still have things they can improve. They have very good features but I think they can improve some of those features and make it into a super service. Today, they are a good solution. It could be a super solution.

Regarding Barracuda, Google has been using that technology for a very long time. If a company like Google is using that technology...

Take the opportunity to get to know the device. You need to request a proof of concept, in the case that you are comparing it with another brand. That is the best way to show what Barracuda can do, completely. It's not the same as a simple server, or any other device.

If you only want to secure internet access, Barracuda will comply completely with all the features you require. But if you have public servers, and you are looking for more security options, etc., and don't want to spend a lot, Barracuda is what you are looking for. If you are a company that has no specific standard to follow, Barracuda is what you are looking for. It has very good hardware, it has very good software - or operating system - and they have very good features and good pricing. If you compare it with other brands, Barracuda is a very good solution.