Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs. Webroot Antivirus

I would say a small business with a basic firewall and security needs would be a perfect fit for the Barracuda CloudGen firewall. I know that they soon end up leaving the NG models and are moving forward with the F series firewall. I think the F series is a much more difficult to manage device and doesn’t offer simplistic configuration or use and lacks cloud control so I don’t understand the move on Barracuda’s part to nix a great easy to manage the firewall. I do think that the NG line is maybe too simple for bigger businesses and would lack some main features that they would require.

Incentivized

Over the years, [in our experience], the maintenance of the Forcepoint Web Security solution proved to be more cumbersome and troublesome with each version upgrade. In addition, it did not transition well to support the large increase of remote workers. We also experienced weird incompatibilities with the client. We have since replaced this solution with Zscaler Internet Access, a cloud-based secure web gateway solution with a client that behaves as expected, is more flexible, and requires significantly less administration.

Incentivized

Webroot SecureAnywhere is a good solution for those wanting to protect their endpoints from viruses and malware. It also works great for MSPS as you can manage all clients in a single portal. You have the option for DNS protection and web browser filtering as well. This would also work well in any small business.

Incentivized

• The management software is excellent. It make it much easier to manage the firewalls than some of the other vendors.
• Watching real-time traffic is easy to do when trying to troubleshoot a users issues getting to a particular service.
• Support from Barracuda has been excellent. We rate their phone and online remote support as being the best in the business.
• We like the QoS and Traffic shaping of the NG Firewalls. They help is manage our limited bandwidth, so that business critical resources are available over lesser critical resources.
• Integration with Active Directory makes it easy to identify users activities in logs.

Incentivized

• It prevents users from accessing websites that may have recently been created for the purpose of distributing malware.
• It prevents users from accidentally or intentionally accessing websites that are considered inappropriate for a work environment.
• It allows us to create different policies for different teams in our organization.

Incentivized

• Webroot checks all search result links and delivers warnings or approvals to users. This means Webroot is thorough and assists to keep users familiar with any potential problem sites.
• Webroot is easily activated as a Chrome or browser extension to ensure ease of access.
• Webroot monitors activity and will send updates to the IT department to keep them privy of any potential problems.

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.

• The user access logs contain a lot of useless information. I understand this is very hard to tackle as I've seen this across any product that logs web activity.
• I would like to see more customization options of website block pages.

Incentivized

• Webroot could do a better job of working on their integration partnerships with companies like LabTech (now known as Automate). Many times we make it through 2 or 3 levels of support before one of the parties says "oh well you need to talk to LabTech about this" or vice versa. That can be frustrating for partners when trying to understand and resolve issues between the two applications.
• Cryptolocker/ransomware is a hot topic and I will say that Webroot has provided us with adequate protection when we first started using in 2014. I understand the complexities and challenges AV companies face with new threats being created everyday. I do want to point out that there have been instances where Webroot has not been able to stop one of those types of attacks. After talking with support - it was clear that they had no good answer as to why that particular threat was not stopped and quarantined.
• Support for the enterprise side of Webroot can be daunting at times. Response times are hit or miss depending on the severity of the issue. Sometimes you get a great support engineer who will go above and beyond - sometimes I ask myself how this person is even employed with the lack of communication skills or actual interest in helping resolve partner issues.

Incentivized

It is very stable, the organisation has "locked in" the product and has no plans to change or try another product. We have already renewed our 2019-2020 licenses. It is user friendly and people catch on easily when they first use it. The only downtime is when we install Microsoft updates! It has excellent reporting which help in determining how the organisation's Internet is used and also during both internal and external IT audits.

Incentivized

It's easy to renew with Webroot, their support is very attentive and highly available. However if you do choose to change products, they even provide means of removing the software from your endpoints via the admin portal which is very convenient.

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.

Despite the intimidating Linux CLI when you use the appliance for troubleshooting, the web security usability compensates as most of the Administration of the system is done there. It is GUI based and has an easy to use UI where one can navigate around rather easily like getting reports, checking alerts, looking the whole setup under deployment to check if all services are running in one place though there are other parts to the system.

Incentivized

There is nothing perfect in this world, but Webroot Antivirus + Internet Security Complete (SecureAnywhere) is easy to use in comparison to others. Also Webroot tech support is only a phone call away. There have been several times I ran into an issue, but tech support as there to help resolve the issue.

Incentivized

I could go on and on about how good Barracuda's support really is. I have yet to have a problem they didn't help me fix and I always learn something when talking with them. The story that best describes my overall experience with Barracuda's support is this: When I first put in the xSeries they had a problem with a policy route. There was a bug in the code and in the one situation I was it, it just would not work. I went up the levels of support and they couldn't fix it. Well, next thing I know I am on the phone with 2 of the guys that programmed the thing and they work out the solution in no time and get me going. That is support. That is what I have come to expect from Barracuda. If the tech on the phone doesn't know the answer, they do not stop until they find it. Grant it, I also have to admit I do not call support with every problem, I try to work it out on my own first as that is how I learn best, so when I do call support it is going to be complicated.

Incentivized

The is a quick first response to acknowledge your issue and the Engineers never take more than two hours to fix an issue and we hardly get issues looking at the fact that the system is pretty stable. There is also a robust Knowledge Base in the site for known problems.

Incentivized

We have not had to use Webroot support much over the years. The one or two times we did we were referred to online documentation and in a somewhat condescending manner in one case and in another case, the support person did not demonstrate much knowledge of their product and referred us to the user community for support.

Incentivized

Research known issues with upgrading from the Support Knowledge base, this will enable you avoid road blocks along the way and reduce your dependence on Forcepoint Support

Incentivized

Our Cisco firewall was always difficult to make any changes against. It had no user-friendly GUI interface. We were calling technical support most of the time whenever we needed to make any changes. The Barracuda CloudGen Firewall has a GUI interface which we are looking forward to getting better acquainted with as we move off of our old Cisco. Of course, Barracuda's technical support is always there and is top notch!

To be honest, once using Forcepoint for our Web Security, I have not wanted to look anywhere else. The dashboard gives me quick insight of threats, productivity, and bandwidth usage. Again, this is a layer in my security and it fills many holes. I feel safe and I do like I can just let it do its thing

Incentivized

While we consider alternatives from time to time when putting together our budget, we haven't felt the need to thoroughly test a competitor since webroot has been working well for us and we are comfortable with the pricing.

Incentivized

Ease of implementation across various devices is easy and efficient regardless of scale. Whether it is 5 devices or 500 the product continually proves its the best in its class.

Incentivized

• We saved multiple thousands of dollars the first year out with the firewall in maintenance fees. We paid for the firewall and 3 years of service and still saved money.
• The ease of management allows me to do my job more efficiently. I save a lot of time when doing my day to day job because I can get to my firewall virtually anywhere.
• I feel a lot safer and my business more secure knowing that I have configured things the way they need to be and it was simple and not overly complicated.

Incentivized

• Being a non-profit the cost is a bit higher than some competitors so our ROI takes a bit longer to recoup. I would really like to see better non-profit pricing.
• The ease of doing a report on someone cuts down on the IT man-hours to do website tracking for managers as we can do it from a central point whereas in the past (prior to Forcepoint/Websense) we would have to ghost their machine to look for activity as well as their local servers.

Incentivized

• It has had a mostly positive impact as we have not had any breaches.
• The only negative impact has been when Webroot Antivirus + Internet Security Complete (SecureAnywhere) changed something on their end that caused one of our business applications to not be usable by end-users. That cost our business a fair amount as it took 4 days before it could be used again.

Incentivized