Barracuda ESG (discontinued) vs. Malwarebytes vs. Sophos Intercept X

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.

Now, I gave it that rating because it's a handy tool for diagnosing issues. Quarantining them, and most of the time, it does fix the problem. Though with rootkits, it's been hit or miss, and sometimes perfectly valid software gets flagged erroneously. However, once you've run it, it tends to run continuously, consuming far too many resources and being a real pain to uninstall, sometimes even causing issues.

Incentivized

Sophos Intercept-X is well suited for any environment big or small. There is even a home version that is free that I highly recommend for anyone at home. If you are looking for endpoint protection that is centrally managed, catches everything, and has many features this is the product for you.

Incentivized

• Stops unwanted emails coming through to your inbox, it does this by holding them in a 'quarantine' folder for you to then check and allow or deny.
• Protects against phishing and ransomware attacks.
• Stops employees clicking on dangerous links in emails by putting them in a secure place.

Incentivized

• The software is very good at working in the background without interfering with the end user in any way, there has never been a complaint of slowness on the machines or any excessive scan times because the users are unaware of it.
• Malwarebytes management console is a very nice interface that tracks all of the machines on the network and shows which one is online, offline, up to date, out of date etc. I can also push installation packages to new machines without end user interaction.
• Malwarebytes does extremely well what it is made to do, and that is to stop malware. Never once has any infection made it past malwarebytes to harm an end user machine.
• Malwarebytes is always up to date, definitions are downloaded on a daily basis, you can trust that your software is current and you are being protected from the latest threats out there.

Incentivized

• Sophos is a little too good at DLP. But it is indeed very good at not allowing our data to leave our endpoints without strict adherence to policy.
• Sophos is very good at protecting endpoints against viruses and other malware.
• Sopho is really good at informing us of what is happening on our endpoints. OOTB reporting is way better than expected.

Incentivized

• The appliance has a feature to block all office macros. This is a great feature but only has an on/off setting. I would like to see the additional of allowing exclusions for users who need to receive office macros.
• The feature for email encryption is great and allows us to not require an additional product or service for this. Unfortunately this is similar to the office macro feature and does not allow exclusions. The setting automatically detects information like credit cards, social security numbers, and other sensitive information. I have a user who works with Japanese companies. Japanese phone numbers apparently trigger the SSN filter. I wish I could put an exclusion in for this recipient or sender.
• I wish the appliance had an auto firmware update option. Where non major releases would be automatically installed.

Incentivized

• As of 2021 Q1, I have had issues with upgrading Malwarebytes installs on endpoints from the admin console. On about 30%-50% of the endpoints, I have to manually uninstall them, reboot, and reinstall Malwarebytes. This is a relatively new feature over the last year that Malwarebytes has done that let's you control updating the endpoint agent.

Incentivized

• The migration from on-prem sophos to cloud sophos, could have been a little more seamless
• Would love to get more insight on what was blocked or flagged and what it was trying to do
• Better and more granular feature management from group policies

Incentivized

The last time we renewed Malwarebytes, we renewed for a 3 year renewal. That should describe the confidence we have in the product. Plus the cost savings impact year after year.

Incentivized

We have gotten a great product for the price. Easy to maintain and set up on new devices. Support is great and easy to work with and understand.

Incentivized

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

Usability-wise, it's pretty good, and it gets the job done. But once that's finished, the nags, the pop-ups, and the fact that it slows older systems down recklessly really cost it rating points. It becomes a clutter, and one of the first things we check when we receive reports that a PC is slow is whether it's running malware. Once we uninstall it, the PC is usually easily 40-50% faster. That's too much in the way of resources for something that wants to always run in the background.

Incentivized

The usability has never been a problem. Sophos Intercept X is a program you can install and let protect your company without much intervention. Apart from a few policies, Sophos will keep you protected better than most any product on the market. Sophos Intercept X works quite well when you are looking to "tighten your grip" on user's access to websites, programs, and add-ons.

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

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

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

I honestly haven't needed support for Malwarebytes because I haven't had any problems with it, whatsoever. I am giving it a 9 rating because I haven't actually had an encounter or experience with customer service or support, so it's hard to rate the actual support team since I've never had the privilege of coming into contact with them.

Incentivized

Most of the support reps are fantastic. There have been a few though that have had to be escalated via Account Manager when they haven't followed up but this is a rare instance, and often followed up by the Support Manager for APAC.

Incentivized

Best thing was the help pushing out via group policy and was able to get instructions for that on sophos site

Incentivized

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

Malwarebytes seems to lead the industry in customer focus. Their support team is superior. The breadth of services they offer is a major factor along with their roadmap for the future. I believe the update process is one of the easiest I've experienced with major software platforms. You may be able to receive a discount if you purchase through a reseller / IT vendor.

Incentivized

I don't feel it's fair to compare Sophos Intercept X with the versions of Symantec and AVG that I have used in the past - as that was such a long time ago. I'm sure those other companies have released far more features than I used all those years ago

Incentivized

• The cost of ESS for our organization is tiny compared to the amount of money we would lose if even one virus-laden PDF slipped through
• Ignoring genuine malware/phishing, the cost of ESS for our organization is tiny compared to the amount of money we save by blocking regular spam (so employees don't ever see it)
• From an administrator's perspective, putting the reins in the hands of our employees so they can look at their own quarantine (and leave IT out of it) has saved us 💵DOLLA 💸DOLLA💵BILLS 💸Y'ALL💵

Incentivized

• Less cleanup and work for IT, as users/PC don't get infected as often
• Less user interaction when premium is installed, it will run scans and block sites for you
• Less downtime as PCs stay up and running, users can stay productive

Incentivized

• Before we had Intercept X, we had several infections of ransomware. Since that time it has stopped at least 10 attempts, saving us thousands of man-hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• By decreasing the time needed for malware remediation, it has saved us the cost of .25 FTE in the IT department.
• Initial setup was cumbersome and cost us .1 FTE in additional costs the first year.

Incentivized