Item: Barracuda Web Security Gateway
Rating: 10
Author: Jay Glatt

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use the Barracuda Web Security Gateway across our entire company and organization. It allows our organization to benefit to use online applications, websites, tools, downloads, etc., without exposure to web-borne malware and viruses. We can control what areas or sites users are allowed to visit, as well as monitor user sites/domains visited, time spent, bandwidth used. For us, bandwidth can be easily consumed by a few users or a division and we always want to control it.

Pros and Cons

Control of domains/sites allowed for access. We can be sure our users are not using their online activity to accidentally, or intentionally, to go to malicious, threatening, intolerance, hate, or pornography.
Reporting is easy and informative. Reports allow you to summarize for specific time periods, and then drill down to see time spent, or bandwidth used.
Blocking and/or allowing instantly for a specific user or groups is easily done and takes effect immediately.

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

Return on Investment

We had several of our divisions that we thought needed to increase their internet bandwidth, due to decreased speed and productivity. After installing the Barracuda Web Security Gateway, we realized we had some abusive behavior going on with online activity. We set some controls and the bandwidth usage decreased by at least 30%, allowing us to maintain the current bandwidth and not spending more money.

Alternatives Considered

We previously had no web security at our company. This left everything open to malware and viruses. We had several PC's a month being infected. We thought it was mostly coming from spam email and we improved our spam detection, but soon we discovered the PC's were being infected because of online activity. Most of the time the user had no idea they were clicking on links that were malicious. This has all been mitigated with the Barracuda Web Security Gateway.

Support Rating

Barracuda support is always available, 24/7. They are always friendly, supportive, and follow-up with anything they promise. Any ticket that is opened is touched constantly by the support team until it is remedied.

Key Insights

Do you think Barracuda Web Security Gateway delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Barracuda Web Security Gateway's feature set?

Yes

Did Barracuda Web Security Gateway live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Barracuda Web Security Gateway go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Barracuda Web Security Gateway again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

We used to have about 2-3 PC's a month being infected from users browsing to undesirable sites. This was taking a huge toll on my IT resources. Since implementing the Barracuda Web Security Gateway we have, maybe, one PC infected a year. Incredible improvement!

We also had an HR incident with an employee being accused of looking at pornography while at work. After reviewing the Barracuda Web Security logs, we determined the user did not, and could not, browse to any pornographic websites. This cleared the accused employee of the false allegations and also allowed us to take action against the employee who made the false allegations.

Barracuda WSG Rescued Us!

Overall Satisfaction with Barracuda Web Security Gateway