Abnormal Security vs. Barracuda Email Protection

Another local organization was compromised, and we were one of the targets of their further attempts. We were 100% protected because the behavioral analysis protected us, but also allowed me to contact that organization and report their compromise. This has actually happened more than one time since going live.

Incentivized

I would definitely recommend it due to the decent pricing. I wish the MS built-in M365 tools were better, but Barracuda does a good job of taking their place. For industries that need DLP on their email, like healthcare, banking, and education, Barracuda provides a reliable product for a good cost. The additional services you get, malware/AV filtering, URL filtering, spam protection, business continuity, those are all icing on the cake. The only issues we've ever really had with them is that it will sometimes take a back/forth string of emails and decide randomly to encrypt it, so what was a flowing benign conversation is now locked behind a wall for recipients. As the sender, you have no idea when it's going to decide to do this and have to remember to tag emails with a decrypt tag long before it happens or face the consequences

Incentivized

• Spam filtering...we have been able to turn our spam sensitivity down on Exchange allowing more legitimate messages through to user inboxes.
• Malicious email filtering...we experienced several successful phishing attacks over the past year. Abnormal Security has prevented hundreds of individual campaigns since going live in August '22. I cannot thank them enough!
• Automated response for reported emails...my team is small and we do not have enough hours in a day to review and respond to each reported email. Abnormal Security performs additional analysis on those reports and automatically responds for us. If the message is spam or malicious, copies of those emails are looked for throughout the server and deleted.

Incentivized

• Barracuda Essentials Spam Filtering works and it is very easy to add or remove senders from the Spam filter lists.
• Barracuda Essentials provides excellent protection from Phishing and other Malware.
• Barracuda Essentials email encryption is so easy to use and easy to setup. Our users love it.

Incentivized

• None so far, I have been extremely happy with their service.

Incentivized

• The product is pretty solid so I am not sure how it can be improved. One thing I noticed recently, I am not getting the emails back from Sentinel when I send in a "miss". Used to be I got an email back saying "sorry we missed this, we are improving." That does happen anymore, so I am assuming that when I send a miss, the AI is getting better.
• I would expand this to cover all kinds of email fraud like ransomware and spam rather than creating another product.

Although cost competitive, we still feel like we are not digging deep enough to train our staff. We have little to no way other than digging through reports that have not proven to be adequately documented (hey you, Barracuda campaign reports) to identify and require users to take more training who have not passed their requirements.

Incentivized

Regarding usability, we like it to be an easy solution to implement and configure on the server. Routine backups are made frequently and reports are issued for control and analysis by information security teams. It has great integration with the cloud and encryption.

Incentivized

I have not had to use customer support yet which goes to show the effectiveness of the program. It also shows how easy the program is to use for the average person with no experience using this type of program. Our IT department also does a great job at teaching us to detect emails with malware that in combination with this software issues rarely arise even though we have over 500 employees.

Incentivized

It was "stupid easy" from the technical side.

Abnormal Security blocks malicious emails that both PhishER and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense miss. One thing that PhishER does have is the ability to flip a malicious message into a user education phishing email. That's cool, but I think we can just copy/paste the same info into a custom campaign.

Incentivized

Barracuda Essentials has a far easier admin pannel than is provided by mimecast along with far more filtering options such as dkim. Much easier to do the initial setup along with much better support provided. Barracuda Essentials has Advanced threat protection that uses AI to spot patterns and gives you the option to remove a suspect email from all inboxs

• Preventing compromises that have historically led to payroll or accounts payable threats.

Incentivized

• This tool was supplied free with out Email Security, so its come at no cost
• This tool has helped us meet requirements by our insurance to train users on the risks of phishing
• However, the dated interface slows down what should be seamless adoption

Incentivized