Barracuda Web Security Gateway vs. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

For a larger organization, this is a must. It provides insight into what the users are doing online and most malicious sites will no longer be accessible if access is denied. This can also give access to non-work related sites, but in a limited capacity, based on user or time of day. Though a smaller company would benefit from the features, it may be cost prohibitive.

Cisco ASA's are great for internal network connected access between a firewall and the central management server. And, for complex networks where high security requirements with overly strict compliance are necessary. For networks with limited connectivity to the core or for poor network connectivity these are not the best solution. There are other more stand-alone firewall's that do this better. These firewall's are a little more complex to set up to start with so significant knowledge of these devices is required to set them up and ensure they are best practice installed.

Incentivized

• Integrates with other Barracuda products, including the Barracuda Web Application Firewall and the Barracuda Email Security Gateway.
• Helps manage bandwidth to improve network performance.
• Easy to use.
• Allows you to perform SSL inspections to view content on social networks.
• Help prevent data loss.
• Protect our privacy.

Incentivized

• ASA is our VPN concentrator. The client and server are very stable and very easy to use
• ASA also offers Intrusion Prevention, to an extent. This is also very useful for an improved security posture for a small company
• ASA allowed us to scale very quickly. We could onboard clients, partners, and consultants and give them a great onboarding experience as well
• Administrative costs with ASA are low. It's very easy to administer.

Incentivized

• I don't think I have anything to mention here. The Barracuda Web Security Gateway does everything we need it to do.

• The ASDM software is at times a nightmare to install because of different java versions[.]
• [The firewall] could do with a power button, just to be able to do a hard reboot when needed[.]
• It would be nice to manage the firewall via the web on port 443[.]

Incentivized

To be honest there has been now great products out in the market compared to Cisco ASA. I beleieve Cisco has to do a lot of improvement in this area. The other defeiniete factors is the cost when it comes to renewals which is always a premium on Cisco products

Incentivized

There are a lot of settings you can adjust. The web log is easy to use. If a user is having issues accessing a website, you can go in and see what's being blocked and why. After that, you can make adjustments fairly easy. The GUI is easy to navigate and updating the software is a simple click of a button.

Incentivized

I generally have not noticed the outages, however since it's a machine it can malfunction, we need to implement the firewall infrastructure in such a way that it is highly available with device failure, region failure etc. Else any solution will be having the issues if they are not build with resiliency.

Incentivized

Barracuda support have also been excellent when we have had to contact them. The only time we had a hardware issue on a device (and that device was about 8 years old) it was replaced within about 24 hours of reporting it. Generally there has not been much need to contact their support, as once the device is in and set up, it just works.

Incentivized

The support is usually very good and gets back to you very quickly. However I had some instances of when two engineers will give me wildly different answers to what I thought was a simple question. Overall however I do rate the support highly and they are generally always very good.

Incentivized

It was quite a good one, how ever requires an expertise to deploy hence the SMB segment would be finding it difficult to implement this product. The one good reason is that there are lot of ASA certified engineers in compared to the other certified engineers. Hence this resembles positively on the deployment as you have quite a lot of experienced engineer on your deployment

Incentivized

SonicWall, Barracuda NG Firewall, and WatchGuard provides Content Filtering, but are primarily firewalls with Content Filtering features. The Web Filter is a dedicated appliance with more storage space and better reporting of users.

Incentivized

We were using [pfSense] before in our environment but we regularly facing difficulties over it due to software bugs & downtime. After implementing Cisco ASA, it resolved our availability issue & provides us a reliable solution with the best security features & easy to understand GUI.

Incentivized

• I came into the company with Barracuda already implemented so it worked well for a number of years.
• Their support contract was a bit pricey.
• For what the company paid for the system, Barracuda was worth the money over the 10 years it was implemented.

Incentivized

• Most network engineers have worked with ASA, so there is no need for re-training when adding or turning over staff
• Current configs from older devices plug in easily, and are operational on larger devices if an upgrade is required
• Many support options available

Incentivized