Barracuda Web Security Gateway vs. pfSense

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.

I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

• 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

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

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

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

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

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

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

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

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

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

• 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

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized