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Barracuda ESG (discontinued) vs. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)

    Score6.5 out of 10
    N/ABarracuda ESG were physical or virtual appliances designed to protect email servers from spam, virus, spoofing, phishing and spyware attacks. The product line is discontinued.N/A

    Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/ACisco Secure Email Threat Defense provides protection against email threats that compromise an organization’s brand and operations. Its advanced threat detection capabilities uncover known, emerging and targeted threats. And it expands the scope of organizations' defenses to detect dangerous threats and rapidly search for and remediate threats across security controls. Secure Email Threat Defense's Artificial Intelligence and machine…N/A
    Pricing
    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    Chose Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
    The Barracuda [Email Security Gateway] is cost comparative to the Sonicwall Email Security appliance but outperforms it in every scenario we tested. The Mimecast Security Email Gateway was not a good fit, had far too many "beta" quality features. The Cisco Email Security
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Barracuda does not have all the features Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense does. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is integrated to Cisco Talos, the online Threat vigilance software that inspects world wide threats for both networking and email security. It gets updates real …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    I find Cisco Secure Email cost effective, and it is also rich in features.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Cisco Email Security provides the first layer of defense against cyber threats and protects sensitive outbound data. It guards against spam, fraudulent senders, infected files whenever they become malicious and blocks risky URLs to prevent attacks. It also prevents data loss …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    78%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    27 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    27 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    78%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    27 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    75%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    23 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    22 Answers
    Features
    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Secure Email Gateway
    Comparison of Secure Email Gateway features of Barracuda ESG (discontinued) and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Feature
    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
    7.3
    17 Ratings
    14% below category average
    Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    8.4
    23 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Anti-malware8.017 Ratings8.716 Ratings
    Customizability4.415 Ratings8.816 Ratings
    Data Loss Protection9.012 Ratings8.215 Ratings
    Threat Detection7.517 Ratings8.923 Ratings
    Sandboxing9.010 Ratings8.115 Ratings
    End-to-End Encryption7.013 Ratings8.816 Ratings
    Management Tools5.917 Ratings7.222 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Small Businesses
    Barracuda Email Protection
    Score10 out of 10
    Barracuda Email Protection
    Score10 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Avanan
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Avanan
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Avanan
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Avanan
    Score9.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (25 ratings)
    9.0
    (23 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.4
    (5 ratings)
    8.2
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Good combination when using their other products like an incident response. When using automated workflows, this makes creating sender policies a breeze. Unfortunately, this can also be done too well as it may filter out valid emails and to resend or place them back into users' mailbox isn't an easy thing to do even if you attempt to resend through the Email Security Gateway.
    Read full review
    Cisco
    I will certainly recommend Cisco Secure Email to my friends/colleagues, one look at the dashboard/statistics will actually convince any IT professional to use this product. We noticed an outstanding improvement in Email quality, most of the SPAM emails are caught, and our users have never been happier!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • ESS has a simple interface for both users and administrators.
    • The "Manage Quarantine" button in each email is a direct sign-on link, so users don't have to remember their password to manage their quarantine (this is GOLD, Jerry!).
    • The baseline functionality (catching spam/malware/phishing/malware attachments/malformed PDFs etc) is super-solid, with few false positives and few false negatives.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Manages Junk Mail Well-We configured and tested our configuration to filter out the majority of junk mail hitting our inboxes.
    • Manages Graymail-We configured and tested our Cisco ETD for graymail filtering and reduced the amount of unwanted advertising and other legitimate emails.
    • Creating unique policies that were tailored to block or allow emails from certain senders.
    • Stopped malicious email traffic (e.g., malicious attachments and links) with rules for identifying and stripping potentially malicious attachments or links.
    • Allows easy configuration for other email security measures such as SPF, DMARC and DKIM.
    • Cisco engineers provide an annual free security health check. We took advantage of several security health checks where Cisco certified engineers go over the security setting of our Cisco ETD. We were provided a written report that highlighted strengths and weaknesses of our Cisco ETD setup.
    • Monitoring email traffic flow is almost overwhelming with the amount of information you can obtain from the portal. This gives valuable information to IT staff in terms of volume and type of emails the company is receiving.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • You need to take time in adding your contacts to a whitelist so that you don't miss an email.
    • I recommend changing the time interval; Barracuda notifies you that you have quarantined emails as we were only getting 1 per day and we missed some urgent emails.
    • The quarantine folder is web based, we'd prefer it to have been an add-in for Outlook.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • The web interface is definitely dated
    • The software updates to the user interface and the documentation online are not congruent. Some docs are old and information is lacking to make changes
    • The email filtering and email search features are really dated. And other tools are more user friendly
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    There is a 50/50 chance that we will renew. We are in the middle of moving from on-prem to the cloud so we may not need it once we are fully migrated.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    Setting up the Barracuda for use with Microsoft 365 provides issues that Barracuda seems to have no fix for. I mentioned these issues to their support, because I am constantly reminded of them by their system, and I was told that those errors are normal for our setup and to ignore them which is frustrating to me.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Good interface, easy to use and set up. If there were any issues, there is very good documentation and videos that one can follow for additional setup and best practices. As typical with most Cisco solutions, there are more features than needed for our purposes but good to know they are there in case of future needs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    Availability is robust and flawless. This is a non-issue, its always up & running and fail-over protection is available for restarts or upgrades.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense's availability is great and reliable when you need it most. We haven't had any noticeable outages or issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    The WebUI is the only piece I find lacking on the Barracuda ESK. Its is not the fastest and is fairly utilitarian in its approach. The Outlook plug-in, while not in wide use here, causes zero slowdown in Outlook or the Barracuda ESG.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Barracuda Email Security Gateway support is great at responding and escalating cases when needed. Timeliness is key when dealing with email attacks, spoofing or malware. Barracuda also has great resources for end-user training as our end users are our first line of defense in combatting attacks on our company. Training end-users pays off in time spent dealing with any email attacks
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Strong support with fast response. TAC can suggest best mail policy regarding customer challenges Some cases they need to do patch directly to appliance. TAC does not need to remote the appliance through our laptop. They use secure connection to appliance, check the logs and response through the problems
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    The implementation went well, no issues or problems to report.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    Barracuda integrates well with Office 365 and mail flow is great. It was the first solution we found that was part of a greater suite to fit all the requirements we had. With the Email Security gateway being in the cloud, it required no extra hardware but also nothing new installed on an endpoint as some solutions require.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco SETD, with a broad deployment and full integration with Microsoft 365 gives us a strong protection, especially where we can leverage its strengths: Microsoft‑365 integration, mailbox remediation, policy enforcement, and your visibility across Cisco tools.


    Proofpoint is better around user awareness (warning tags etc.), and continuity/archiving. Considering that we have a full Cisco stack, choosing Proofpoint would come with higher cost, learning curve, possible redundancy of features, licensing complexity.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • The gateway learns current scam which can prevent unmeasureable damage. As a government organization attacks on our network affect public safety.
    • Previous gateways I have managed have required significant amounts of time grooming. The Barracuda gateway has freed up a great deal of my time due to its intelligence and intent scanning.
    • I have very few incidences where a legitimate malicious email will pass through the filter. Just one of these emails can wreak havoc on an organization.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Our email security has increased.
    • Users are now more confident about their email security.
    • Management of threat detection and prevention has become easier.
    • Finer controls on spam filtering gives customization capability.
    • GDPR compliance ensures peace of mind from a regulation point of view.
    • The quarantine feature has ensured that we do not lose important emails while they are being analyzed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense Screenshots

    Screenshot of an Impact Report showing efficacy metrics and ROI indicatorsScreenshot of a detailed view of phishing messagesScreenshot of the dashboard