Barracuda ESG (discontinued) vs. McAfee Email Gateway (Discontinued)

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.

Comparable to a Barracuda email appliance, these units retain email that is quarantined as well as provide cloud layer to support it. It is best suited for a medium size company as the devices are often not as scalable as Barracuda.

Incentivized

• ESS has a simple interface for both users and administrators.
• The "Manage Quarantine" button in each email is a direct sign-on link, so users don't have to remember their password to manage their quarantine (this is GOLD, Jerry!).
• The baseline functionality (catching spam/malware/phishing/malware attachments/malformed PDFs etc) is super-solid, with few false positives and few false negatives.

Incentivized

• Filtering system is very strong, more often than not blocks bad email.
• Does fine job filtering and configuring content filtering for extension types such as ZIP or RAR.
• Intermediary between Internet and email system provides extra layer of security including ability to spool email in the event of an email system outage.
• Outbound encryption feature is very useful for security purposes.

Incentivized

• You need to take time in adding your contacts to a whitelist so that you don't miss an email.
• I recommend changing the time interval; Barracuda notifies you that you have quarantined emails as we were only getting 1 per day and we missed some urgent emails.
• The quarantine folder is web based, we'd prefer it to have been an add-in for Outlook.

Incentivized

• The onsite appliances have end-of-life forcing an upgrade to new unit.
• Many of the appliances have been end-of-life and seems McAfee may not be offering the service in the future.

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

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

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

Barracuda provides two product options, the ESS cloud-only filtering, and onsite Email Security Gateway appliances. Unless compliance needs require the on-premises device, the ESS option easily beats the McAfee Email Gateway.

Incentivized

• The gateway learns current scam which can prevent unmeasureable damage. As a government organization attacks on our network affect public safety.
• Previous gateways I have managed have required significant amounts of time grooming. The Barracuda gateway has freed up a great deal of my time due to its intelligence and intent scanning.
• I have very few incidences where a legitimate malicious email will pass through the filter. Just one of these emails can wreak havoc on an organization.

Incentivized

• The end-of-life of appliances is unfortunate as it forces a purchase of a replacement unit. Barracuda devices have a 4-year refresh cycle so purchasing additional hardware is rarely necessary.
• McAfee seems to be phasing out the service over time.

Incentivized