Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Symantec Critical System Protection

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

Symantec Critical System Protection (CSP) is very well suited for environments that do not change such as point of sale systems and critical servers. This product is spectacular at protecting end of life operating systems when supporting legacy software prevents upgrades. When security updates are no longer available, CSP will prevent exploits and other malware from taking advantage. This product is not well suited for systems that require a lot of changes. For one, it does not notify when a change has been blocked by CSP, causing some server administrators to waste many hours chasing a phantom technical problem when turning off CSP could have solved it right away. Also, profiling takes time so systems that constantly change would need hundreds of exceptions made.

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

• Data Center Security 6.0 and higher allows you to easily build out policies to deploy to monitor/block what is required/needed.
• The agent that is installed on the hosts has a small footprint in terms of CPU and memory usage.
• The ability to customize it anyway you need to as well as utilize out of the box policies to monitor critical OS functionality.

• 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.

• Tuning takes a very long time
• Turning the product on or off can take time
• When an action is prevented by CSP, there is no pop up or notification, making this a burden for server administrators

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.

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 respond quickly and efficiently without the need to reiterate the actual issue. Their backline support is amazing and always there for us when it is needed. They explain the troubleshooting steps taken and what they did to help us resolve the issue just incase it creeps up again we have the information to correct it ourselves.

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!

We evaluated Bit 9 and you have more flexibility with the rule set and do not rely on the cloud to tell you what is approved and not approved. You build out the policies the way you need them to be and who better knows the environment that the people that work it daily.

• 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

• Great protection for unchanging systems
• We have comfort that the protected systems are safe from intrusion
• Excellent price

Incentivized