Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Formerly NG Firewalls

We began using Barracuda for the traditional edge firewall use case. It does VERY well in this role. The virtual service hosting modality (even with an on-premise appliance) provides really great flexibility to meet our specific needs. It also lets us easily update the firewalls to adjust to changing needs within our organization. We have begun the deployment of Barracuda firewalls to provide internal defenses as well, isolating particular locations or business units to provide traffic visibility or better control of network traffic prior to tunneling over WAN. We have deployed only basic SD-WAN with Barracuda so far but how found no issues with that either. Barracuda firewalls would be less suitable for very small deployments or where licensing costs are a concern for shelved hardware.

Used as a gateway in shops, will be good for routing and firewall.

It works very well in a retail environment with multiple shops that need a VPN tunnel back to corporate.
I have not used it as the edge device in a large office. That performance is unknown to me.

Very likely,

The product and the team behind it make it a winner.

CloudGen is perfect for our size business to help remote workers connect seamlessly with the VPN product. We have around 120 staff and 900+ students with the ability to connect remotely to the school - the CloudGen provides the throughput and the security to allow this. Obviously not all people are connected at once, but as far as I'm aware there is no user limit.

Had one issue where I misconfigured it - had great instant support from Barracuda - got me back on track in a matter of minutes.

Since we have only implemented the Barracuda CloudGen Firewall a few months ago, we only started using the CudaLaunch VPN portion of the firewall. We had used several other VPN utilities, and they all had issues over time. Mostly with disconnecting the user. We have not had any issues with the Barracuda CGF CudaLaunch VPN at all in the months we have been using it. And believe me, with the pandemic, we have been using it heavily over the past months.

We will be moving our old Cisco firewall settings to the Barracuda CGF and coming off of the Cisco firewall completely in the near future.

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.

They are very quick to answer the phone and I think I haven’t waited more than 5 minutes in the queue and if you have to hang up they actually call you back when it’s your turn in line. They have a secure tunnel that you can open for them to get into your device and help you with basically anything. It’s pretty magical if you ask me.

Well suited to a larger company with dedicated staff. Would possibly be a little complex for smaller businesses. There are a lot of functions that we don't use as a basic firewall would probably have sufficed, but the build quality and scope for future expansion make it worthwhile. Clearer documentation on how to enable features for specific scenarios would help us to get more out of it.

Documents can often be a little too technical, and lacking in real-world application. No initial support was offered in the setting up of the device, although this may be the fault of the supplier as opposed to Barracuda themselves.

It is a good general-purpose firewall. We use it as a firewall, a VPN concentrator, and for intrusion prevention. It does a wonderful job with each of these tasks. In terms of the F380 itself, I would not be well suited to a small office purely based on cost, but the F12 does a good job for those areas.

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.

The firewalls management is made easy through its very good management software. It has a lot of features such as VPN, ATP, IPS, Real-time log views, Active Directory integration, Virus Scanning of traffic / file downloads, High Availability Failover, Qos / Traffic Shaping, and a nice quick glance dashboard.

There are multiple tiers of models for the Barracuda NG Firewalls, but there is a firewall for any size company. Once the steep learning curve of the configuration is surpassed, they are one of the most powerful business firewalls available. Highly, highly recommend and the support from Barracuda is incredible.

Anyone that has a business and/or stores client data MUST have a next generation firewall, zero exceptions. If you have multiple sites, configuring a VPN between them takes less than a minute to configure. The surprising thing is that these devices have many more features than their competitors but often cost less. Throw in the 4-year refresh cycle and you never need to purchase another appliance.