Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Qualys TruRisk Platform

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

Qualys Cloud Platform is well suited for organizations that need additional tools to secure and bolster their security from end to end. The automated, real-time threat protection is very quick to notify an admin of potential vulnerabilities and risks, as well as recommending quick fixes to resolve/close the gap before an incident occurs. QCP excels at portraying all of these in a single pane of glass, and find that the Qualys reports are more detailed than competitor product lines. One of our big issues with QCP is that you do have to pay for each scanner, which can quickly add up to large costs. For this reason, I would rate Qualys at a ~7 due to great features and functionality, but overall value could be better for a large organization. I would also say that QCP may make more sense for smaller organizations due to this pricing model.

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 really does well at vulnerability scanning, which it is well known for. It's accuracy at finding vulnerabilities is top notch, more so than a lot of other vulnerability tools out there. In an organization/company you want this kind of accuracy at finding vulnerabilities in your network/endpoints
• It is very good at managing endpoints on a consistent basis, meaning you can add endpoints to Qualys and have the platform scan/track/protect for vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis, without user intervention
• It does really well at separating out and identifying what levels of criticality each vulnerability should fall into. This way, an organization/company can attack the more critical vulnerabilities first

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.

• This program is really complicated, the multiple functions that are presented to us are not very clear and in some cases, it is a matter of intuition to execute a function, it is not very informative.
• The interface of this program can be a real problem; for our taste, this program looks a bit messy, and the interface does not help or guide you to find the options you need.

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.

Again, the usability of Qualys has been a pinpoint for this entire review. It was easily the worst thing about the product and because of this, I would not recommend Qualys to anybody in my field. This should be something that Qualys strives to improve if they wish to stay in business.

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

They had a support page within the WAS to report any concerns or seek help. But the UI of that is not smooth. Regardless support staff were pretty responsive and helpful. They scheduled calls to understand and address our problems. Email support is good as well.

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!

As described before Qualys is used to scan periodically the environment in order to check if there are some packages (Linux) or Applications (Windows) outdated, generating reports to the Service Owners, fulfilling what's is expected from us, attending all our expectations regarding the tool. That's why we'd choose Qualys to our organization.

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

• Big time-saving tool vs. having to comb through several system reports which ultimately can still have you missing unapproved software.
• Quick snapshot via the dashboard provided a nice summary of where you're assets meet or do not meet your organization's policy requirements.

Incentivized