Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Barracuda Web Security Gateway

The firewalls management is made easy through its very good management software. It has a lot of features such as VPN, ATP, IPS, Real-time log views, Active Directory integration, Virus Scanning of traffic / file downloads, High Availability Failover, Qos / Traffic Shaping, and a nice quick glance dashboard.

Incentivized

Barracuda Web Security Gateway is a secure solution. This solution offers advanced filtering for web content, application control, access control, network monitoring, and user authentication to control network access. It is easy to use, helps prevent access to harmful content. Therefore, I highly recommend the Barracuda Web Security Gateway to enhance your network security, secure remote administration, and approve and control application usage.

Incentivized

• Increased level of network protection against threats.
• Visibility and control of applications that users access.
• URL Filtering to block unauthorized or prohibited websites on the internal corporate network.
• Protection against diverse malware at the edge of the network.
• Firewall redundancy with another backup appliance.

Incentivized

• It can integrate with active directory to place restrictions based on a specific user or group if required - or alternatively to allow a user/group to access more on the web if needed.
• The application blocking features have been especially useful in our enterprise, and there is a large number of applications & web applications available to block/allow as needed.

Incentivized

• Very complex and steep learning curve to get up to speed.
• Multiple ways to configure for the same service or feature. Takes time to determine "your" customized build.
• Interface can sometimes be clunky when trying to determine how it's organized or arranged. Again, steep learning curve.

• There are 2 different policies; authenticated and unauthenticated. Sometimes the filter does not pick up the user that is logged in. When this happens, that user could potentially access sites that would normally be blocked.
• Sometimes blocking one thing could block something you need. We had an instance where we use remote software. We block BitTorrent but for some reason, the filter was seeing this remote software as BitTorrent traffic. I got support on the line and we were eventually able to figure out a solution.
• We put in certain applications. One of them is supposed to be blocked but a lot of the time it doesn't get blocked.

Incentivized

Easy enough to use and configure using the management UI. Reporting from the web filter is a little clunky, and not very user friendly. To be perfectly honest, once it's set up and running, there isn't a lot to do from the day-to-day side of things, which is not a bad thing.

There are a lot of settings you can adjust. The web log is easy to use. If a user is having issues accessing a website, you can go in and see what's being blocked and why. After that, you can make adjustments fairly easy. The GUI is easy to navigate and updating the software is a simple click of a button.

Incentivized

They are very quick to answer the phone and I think I haven’t waited more than 5 minutes in the queue and if you have to hang up they actually call you back when it’s your turn in line. They have a secure tunnel that you can open for them to get into your device and help you with basically anything. It’s pretty magical if you ask me.

Incentivized

Barracuda support is always available, 24/7. They are always friendly, supportive, and follow-up with anything they promise. Any ticket that is opened is touched constantly by the support team until it is remedied

We used a much alder Cisco ASA router that was chocking our bandwidth and it couldn’t really be compared. It was clunky and horrible at best. Our WatchGuard was overly complicated and difficult to manage and required a version matching thick client installed locally to manage the firewall. The Barracuda solved a bunch of issues from both of these devices and allows me to really save time and money with its easy to configure the interface and inexpensive yet quality device and interface allow me to feel like I am getting a great value for my security.

Incentivized

Barracuda Web Filter is superior to the built-in content filters of any firewalls (even next gen) that we have encountered. It's a misconception that the built-in filtering on a SonicWALL or WatchGuard is enough. I don't believe that Barracuda has any direct competitors in this space that it's not head and shoulders above.

• Really neutral given we came from the x series. The move to the x series was a huge positive in terms of time spent managing and the ability to get what needed to be done, well done. The move to the NG was just the next step.
• I will say the one thing, in terms of value, that is given is the firewall admin application. This one program saves a ton of time in configuration versus using the web-based configuration. You can only pick one, and for me, it's a no brainer - turn the web-based config off and use the app.

Incentivized

• We had several of our divisions that we thought needed to increase their internet bandwidth, due to decreased speed and productivity. After installing the Barracuda Web Security Gateway, we realized we had some abusive behavior going on with online activity. We set some controls and the bandwidth usage decreased by at least 30%, allowing us to maintain the current bandwidth and not spending more money.