Barracuda Web Security Gateway 910 - security appliance
Mfg # BYF910A
CDW # 1683634
Know your gear
The Barracuda Web Security Gateway lets organizations benefit from online applications and tools without exposure to web-borne malware and viruses, lost user productivity, and misused bandwidth. As a comprehensive solution for web security and management, it unites award winning spyware, malware, virus protection combined with the Advanced Threat Protection cloud service. Advanced features ensure that organizations can adapt to emerging requirements like social network regulation, remote filtering, and visibility into SSL encrypted traffic.
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Barracuda Web Security Gateway 910 - security appliance is rated
3.80 out of
5 by
5.
Rated 5 out of
5 by
SolomonAwosina from
A simple-to-use solution that protects web applications, but its customer support should be improved
What is our primary use case?
We use Barracuda Web Security and Filtering to protect web applications on-prem and in the cloud.
What is most valuable?
I like the simplicity of the entire solution itself. The solution is very simple to use and implement. Barracuda Web Security and Filtering is a good product for simplicity and delivery.
What needs improvement?
The solution’s customer support should be improved.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Barracuda Web Security and Filtering is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Our clients have 200 to 300 users using Barracuda Web Security and Filtering.
How are customer service and support?
I don't get good support for Barracuda Web Security and Filtering as I used to get two years ago. The support team takes longer to respond than it used to do before. When they respond, the people who respond do not define the problem properly. They keep wasting time on things that they shouldn't waste time on.
How was the initial setup?
The solution’s initial setup is easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution's pricing is neither cheap nor expensive.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Barracuda Web Security and Filtering to other users because of its security and stability. Barracuda support used to be very good, but now Barracuda support is not so good.
Overall, I rate Barracuda Web Security and Filtering a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner
Date published: 2023-10-20T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
KellyWotton from
Easy-to-use solution with essential cybersecurity features
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for its web-based cybersecurity features.
How has it helped my organization?
The solution helps users with quick web filtering through the DNS portal. It allows them to filter, block, or restrict specific websites or URL paths. Also, it enables blocking a few users on Facebook and allowing particular users. They can access activity logs based on user, domain, categories, and locations to identify suspicious activity around the system.
Its reporting feature is easy to use, interactive, and multi-layered. The users can generate reports based on web activity and usage in terms of time. Also, it has in-built alerts to communicate in case of any issues. In addition, it integrates with many solutions, including Barracuda Firewall and Barracuda Email Security, etc.
What is most valuable?
The solution has the best pricing. It costs considerably less than Cisco Umbrella and many other popular solutions like Palo Alto. Also, working with Barracuda suppliers helps significantly. They allow extending the trial period to 60 days from 20 days. You can request an extension from your representative to showcase all the blocked phishing attempts and the flagged websites. It allows you to generate comprehensive reports for your management team to review. In addition, it has intuitive features for DNS and URL filtering.
What needs improvement?
The solution doesn't allow adding DNS filtering for off-site clients. It only works if you have implemented web security with Barracuda Email Protection. Also, our clients encountered instances where websites instructed them to call fake tech support. We couldn't block many of these URLs by using the filters available. They should improve these particular areas.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. We never encountered any stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup was simple and super fast. It's straightforward to deploy and manage.
What was our ROI?
The solution works effectively in preventing any glitches or malware in our system. Thus, it generates a return on investment for us.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is cost-effective.
What other advice do I have?
The solution is worth the investment. We have been using Barracuda since 2009. Its cost is perfect, and it releases constant updates for services.
Also, its technical team provides immediate and top-tier support for customers using multiple Barracuda products. They reply within 20 minutes in case of queries.
I suggest requesting an extended demo to prove its value. They provide an extended trial and technical assistance multiple times during the trial period. This way, you can run the product in the background, know the process, and build the reports for the management team. So, you have the necessary justification to move forward.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-07-05T00:00:00-04:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
reviewer2087451 from
Gives great control over web traffic; no extra costs outside of licensing
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for Barracuda Web Security Gateway is filtering our staff's web traffic and generating reports on their usage. It is a huge benefit to be able to see their user activity. It ensures that we can control which sites they visit and prevent any potential threats from web traffic.
What is most valuable?
I have found the most valuable the ability to have insight into our web traffic and control its flow.
What needs improvement?
I think that the integration in a Citrix environment should be improved as people are deployed via shared desktops.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for about nine years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
My opinion is that this solution is quite stable and pretty good. We've had to replace a couple of appliances over the nine years. I, myself, have replaced three appliances; two were replaced because of issues and one because I needed to upgrade it to install the latest firmware.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
With the model that we have, this solution is quite scalable. We had to jump to a higher model for their increments for the amount of staff that it would support. We own a model that is basically overkill for our infrastructure just because we hit the point where it was bigger than their starter appliance.
How are customer service and support?
My opinion is that Barracuda's customer service is great.
How was the initial setup?
Barracuda Web Security Gateway is a premise device, so I am definitely involved in the deployments. The deployments are relatively straightforward. The devices are quite easy to get online. It just takes a bit of time to tweak all your specific rules to your organization. Just one person is required for deployment.
What was our ROI?
The ROI is visible. We have on-site staff. We often have to step in and identify and rectify situations in which they browse malicious sites.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
This solution is substantially more expensive than the competitors out there, including Titan HQ or Limecast. They're more on the spam side, but their solutions are higher priced without a doubt. There is no extra cost to this solution. You know what you're getting.
What other advice do I have?
We are actually looking to migrate to a different solution. The one major pain point I have with Barracuda is basic clear around renewal. We typically bind a three-year term. Their price increases are quite substantial and far beyond what competitors ask.
Overall, I would rate the Barracuda solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
KellyWotton from
A web filtering solution that is easy to manage
What is our primary use case?
We used Barracuda Web Security Gateway for web filtering.
What is most valuable?
I like that it does a lot of malicious content and is easy to manage. There are a lot of checkboxes, and you can add your own URLs or get it preconfigured.
What needs improvement?
The price could be better.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Barracuda Web Security Gateway is very stable.
How are customer service and support?
Tech support is good. I never had an issue getting through or with the tech. If they had never heard of the problem before or didn't know how to solve it, they would get another person on the line to help. At Cisco, they would tell you to arrange a call with someone else, which will occur a few hours later.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price could be better. Barracuda started adding more features at the end of 2022. There was no price increase if you bought the maintenance package before the end of 2022. If you signed a three-year contract, you are lucky because there won't be a price increase on those features. Their pricing has increased if you wanted to install all of their features. But they are segmenting. You can buy the whole group, or you can get pieces. But it's tedious. The cost is getting higher than it should.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale from one to ten, I would give Barracuda Web Security Gateway an eight.
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-02-20T00:00:00-05:00
Rated 5 out of
5 by
Wealie Antar from
It comes with useful policy creation features but needs to improve its outdated tech and poor support
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are Barracuda's policies for filtering various websites according to the organization's policies and blocking traffic for any P2P application like torrents. We discourage torrents, though a lot of people want to use them. The torrent application doesn't require any admin privileges. You can run it on your system. Barracuda is good at blocking torrent activity.
What needs improvement?
Apart from that, considering other tier-one applications, like Next-Generation Firewall, they also have web security in-built within their appliances or applications. Barracuda is still lagging behind in features like that, so they need to update if they want to be in the top spot.
Other features I'd like to see in Barracuda Features are ease-of-use for remote users. If you are a roaming user using an organization laptop, the organization has the right to apply the policy. When you are on-premises, you are opening the policy, not out-of-premises. The application that Barracuda Web Security Gateway provides is pretty clumsy and not very easy to work with, and they need to develop that. Either they provide a test platform that redirects the traffic or vice versa.
Moreover, the database is pretty average. Barracuda needs to enhance the database to stop unsolicited traffic. Reporting also needs to be quicker than it is. Barracuda doesn't give you any flexibility to provide reports to higher management. Organizations like us need to do a lot of reporting. When we submit our quarterly report, other appliances allow us to customize or get the reports in a way Barracuda can't because it is rigid with its reporting. Barracuda needs to give users the flexibility to create their reports. The reports offered by the solution are just fine. Finally, acceleration. Right at this moment, most websites are dynamic. For example, organizational websites get updated once a month. If Barracuda can help reduce bandwidth usage and accelerate browsing performance by analyzing these sorts of sites and doing their catching technology work accordingly.
Barracuda should also include DNSSEC, which offers strong protection for web security and is offered by competitors. Barracuda should also up their game for scanning and sandboxing. Likewise, their signatures need augmented intelligence or machine learning because you won't always be able to appraise things, and sometimes you have to go beyond that. You need to block it through its behavior.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using Barracuda for about four years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate Barracuda's stability a six out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Barracuda Web Security and Filtering is not at all scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is very poor. We dropped a lot of Barracuda appliances because of the service. In 2015, the support used to come from the USA or Mexico. Support was extremely good, and then they probably outsourced it to India. Initially, it was good, but it went somewhere. There is no proper solution to talk with the support, and you need to wait one and a half weeks or so to get a proper solution from them. That's a long time for a small solution sometimes.
We use cross-platform technology with other OEMs, for example, Cisco, Juniper, and products from Dell and HP. Every OEM has its warehouse here in our country. Whenever there is a replacement issue, you generate a ticket, and the tech will let us know if it is required to replace anything, and they will replace it quickly. But Barracuda doesn't have any local warehouses. The funny thing is that the Web Security Gateway is currently offline at our premises because of some issue with their client. It was not working properly, so we raised a ticket. After chasing them for nearly one and a half weeks, they came with the appliance that needed to be changed and then mailed us that we had to pay the logistic fee of $593, which is ridiculous. I have paid Barracuda for the Analyzer and also for the IR. It was not the first time they were taking a fee from me because I was renewing the service each year for four or five years, so they should have taken care of logistics if there was a replacement facility in place. They cannot ask for a logistic fee because they don't have the required device in a nearby warehouse. That's their strategic mistake.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Negative
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We've been using Barracuda in our organization since 2019. Before that, we used numerous products like Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Barracuda Web Application Firewall, Barracuda Web Security Gateway, and Barracuda Load Balancer. But now, we are only keeping the Barracuda Web Security Gateway because we are still looking for a suitable solution to protect our web-based security, such as Cisco Umbrella. We are assessing the capabilities because we are not all happy with the performance. If you configure Cisco's and Barracuda's technology, Barracuda is now prehistoric in a way. They need to up their game and make a massive changeover to the technology they currently offer to end users.
How was the initial setup?
The product deployment was straightforward. There was no problem deploying the product initially, but this was four or five years back. The technology-enhanced detection and other facilities with competitors like Cisco and other OEMS are far more advanced. Barracuda needs to update.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Barracuda products are cheap, but their service is awful, and their technology is totally backdated. Barracuda will be fine if you are automated, but we need to search for other options. We are scouting and testing the feasibility of other products to see which ones we can adopt to get better service.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Barracuda Web Security and Filtering a six out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Date published: 2023-08-18T00:00:00-04:00