SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) vs. Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Overall, Solar Winds Access Rights Manager (ARM) is reliable and easy to use once you figure out how to get what you want from the tool. They have both a client and web version of the tool that can be used. Each one has different functionality so just have to remember where to go to do the task you want. We are still early in our usage, but so far it seems to be working well!

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• SolarWinds Access Rights Manager is easy to set up and configure. We had the first report generated in a few hours.
• The automated feature for the reports is great. We just set it and forget it and now the reports get emailed on schedule.

Incentivized

• Increased level of network protection against threats.
• Visibility and control of applications that users access.
• URL Filtering to block unauthorized or prohibited websites on the internal corporate network.
• Protection against diverse malware at the edge of the network.
• Firewall redundancy with another backup appliance.

Incentivized

• Licensing model when we changed over to SolarWinds was [I feel] a nightmare. It needs to be more streamlined and SolarWinds needs to understand what their customers require. When we changed over to SolarWinds we found it very hard to get answers to what modules we were still licensed for.
• Our current system is not functioning. We can't login to the application with the accounts we created that were working. The error that appears doesn't help to resolve it. So at present we just renewed licenses for this year and we can't use the system.

Incentivized

• Very complex and steep learning curve to get up to speed.
• Multiple ways to configure for the same service or feature. Takes time to determine "your" customized build.
• Interface can sometimes be clunky when trying to determine how it's organized or arranged. Again, steep learning curve.

It is in place and working. No time or money to consider anything else.

Incentivized

End user experience is much better than administration

Incentivized

Easy enough to use and configure using the management UI. Reporting from the web filter is a little clunky, and not very user friendly. To be perfectly honest, once it's set up and running, there isn't a lot to do from the day-to-day side of things, which is not a bad thing.

On occasion the server will need to be restarted to get things running again

Incentivized

Satisfactory performance

Incentivized

Very slow response times and sometimes I found the solution and ended up sharing it with support

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It was my first exposure to this type of product and I wasn’t given the time to figure out how best to implement it. I would say get a plan together of what you are tying to accomplish first

Incentivized

While the CatTools are used mainly by a colleague of mine, DameWare is only used periodically and definitely not on a daily base. We chose ARM (when we bought it, it was called 8Man) because it had a good and well fitting set of features for a reasonable price. In addition to that, we could quite easily configure some features for our needs. Other products didn't get even close to this feature list for this price.

Incentivized

We used a much alder Cisco ASA router that was chocking our bandwidth and it couldn’t really be compared. It was clunky and horrible at best. Our WatchGuard was overly complicated and difficult to manage and required a version matching thick client installed locally to manage the firewall. The Barracuda solved a bunch of issues from both of these devices and allows me to really save time and money with its easy to configure the interface and inexpensive yet quality device and interface allow me to feel like I am getting a great value for my security.

Incentivized

No experience with this

Incentivized

• Because it's cut down on the mistakes and time lost creating new user accounts, this has meant there is a reduction in tickets relating to changes needing to be made to user accounts. Whether this was the incorrect spelling of the name, or the need to add/remove security groups. With ARM now doing the user creation along with the templates we've created, this has dramatically cut down the number of support tickets regarding user accounts, meaning our team now has more time to tend to other pending tickets.

Incentivized

• Really neutral given we came from the x series. The move to the x series was a huge positive in terms of time spent managing and the ability to get what needed to be done, well done. The move to the NG was just the next step.
• I will say the one thing, in terms of value, that is given is the firewall admin application. This one program saves a ton of time in configuration versus using the web-based configuration. You can only pick one, and for me, it's a no brainer - turn the web-based config off and use the app.

Incentivized