Barracuda Email Protection vs. McAfee Email Gateway (Discontinued)

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

Comparable to a Barracuda email appliance, these units retain email that is quarantined as well as provide cloud layer to support it. It is best suited for a medium size company as the devices are often not as scalable as Barracuda.

Incentivized

• The software helps us create emails that look exactly or almost exactly the same as the phishing emails we found in our email gateway.
• We already use the ESS gateway from Barracuda Networks, and in the TEP bundle, this software is included, so it's not that much work to also configure this.
• In the software, we can see reports on how our users performed. We can make a selection of users that are more prone to click on "false" links, and this way, we can help them individually.

Incentivized

• Filtering system is very strong, more often than not blocks bad email.
• Does fine job filtering and configuring content filtering for extension types such as ZIP or RAR.
• Intermediary between Internet and email system provides extra layer of security including ability to spool email in the event of an email system outage.
• Outbound encryption feature is very useful for security purposes.

Incentivized

• The #1 feedback I receive from users is that they have limited time for training. It would be nice if the training would be offered in 3-time categories (e.g. up to 3 minutes, up to 5 minutes and up to 10 minutes). This way user's can select a category that matches their availability.

Incentivized

• The onsite appliances have end-of-life forcing an upgrade to new unit.
• Many of the appliances have been end-of-life and seems McAfee may not be offering the service in the future.

Incentivized

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.

We really didn't evaluate any other products. We considered using the filtering features that come with our Office 365 subscription, but just didn't feel it was sufficient protection for our business. Being a medical clinic, we felt like we needed to implement the best solution for our email protection and we found Barracuda Essentials was the leader.

Incentivized

Barracuda provides two product options, the ESS cloud-only filtering, and onsite Email Security Gateway appliances. Unless compliance needs require the on-premises device, the ESS option easily beats the McAfee Email Gateway.

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

• The end-of-life of appliances is unfortunate as it forces a purchase of a replacement unit. Barracuda devices have a 4-year refresh cycle so purchasing additional hardware is rarely necessary.
• McAfee seems to be phasing out the service over time.

Incentivized