Avanan vs. Barracuda ESG (discontinued)

This software is well-suited for a company that is looking to protect its data from common security breaches. It is very user-friendly and easy to implement, which is why these few things make it easily usable on a daily basis. This software also allows for much faster cloud performance and provides regular reports which provide security analytics.

Good combination when using their other products like an incident response. When using automated workflows, this makes creating sender policies a breeze. Unfortunately, this can also be done too well as it may filter out valid emails and to resend or place them back into users' mailbox isn't an easy thing to do even if you attempt to resend through the Email Security Gateway.

• The dashboard for Avanan makes all of the most important information easy to digest.
• Alerting - specifically, the Geo-Location alerts allow us to see if a user has possibly been compromised.
• The End-User Email Quarantine experience gives users the ability to request emails be released, which trains them to better spot legitimate emails.

Incentivized

• Stops unwanted emails coming through to your inbox, it does this by holding them in a 'quarantine' folder for you to then check and allow or deny.
• Protects against phishing and ransomware attacks.
• Stops employees clicking on dangerous links in emails by putting them in a secure place.

Incentivized

• I only ever had one complaint, we had a few hiccups during the setup process. We have now been a customer for two years and have had no further issues. It is likely that the setup pain points have now been resolved as well. Overall the product does what it claims while providing a very intuitive interface.

Incentivized

• The appliance has a feature to block all office macros. This is a great feature but only has an on/off setting. I would like to see the additional of allowing exclusions for users who need to receive office macros.
• The feature for email encryption is great and allows us to not require an additional product or service for this. Unfortunately this is similar to the office macro feature and does not allow exclusions. The setting automatically detects information like credit cards, social security numbers, and other sensitive information. I have a user who works with Japanese companies. Japanese phone numbers apparently trigger the SSN filter. I wish I could put an exclusion in for this recipient or sender.
• I wish the appliance had an auto firmware update option. Where non major releases would be automatically installed.

Incentivized

Cost, need to make sure the cost is competitive for how many users are using email protection as we move users to MS Teams and don't rely so much on full access to email accounts (both sending and receiving internal and external).

Incentivized

Usability is so easy. It was a quick configuration with entering in some credentials, accepting terms and permissions and before you know it it's already going through and taking a look at existing emails. Portal is very easy to use and there are always updates with decent logs. The new UI is great and highly intuitive.

Incentivized

Setting up the Barracuda for use with Microsoft 365 provides issues that Barracuda seems to have no fix for. I mentioned these issues to their support, because I am constantly reminded of them by their system, and I was told that those errors are normal for our setup and to ignore them which is frustrating to me.

Incentivized

Always been available as needed.

Incentivized

Availability is robust and flawless. This is a non-issue, its always up & running and fail-over protection is available for restarts or upgrades.

Incentivized

It's not all the time, on occasion the platform can delay email by seven to ten minutes.

Incentivized

The WebUI is the only piece I find lacking on the Barracuda ESK. Its is not the fastest and is fairly utilitarian in its approach. The Outlook plug-in, while not in wide use here, causes zero slowdown in Outlook or the Barracuda ESG.

Incentivized

Avanan support always is ready to respond to user requests and typically does it in an exceptionally quick timeframe. Most requests are not even needed to be escalated as their team will look at active threats and deal with them before they are even a problem. Monthly meetups are also great in obtaining our needs as well as showing us what is new and in the horizon.

Incentivized

Barracuda Email Security Gateway support is great at responding and escalating cases when needed. Timeliness is key when dealing with email attacks, spoofing or malware. Barracuda also has great resources for end-user training as our end users are our first line of defense in combatting attacks on our company. Training end-users pays off in time spent dealing with any email attacks

Incentivized

There was no in person training.

Incentivized

Takes a lot to get a 10 out of 10.

Incentivized

Ensure system administration and exchange admin are up to speed on Avanan

Incentivized

I have used Cisco's secure Email, one of the major dislike is User Interface that is buggy and not user friendly. It does not update it's database for spam sites. Integration process takes much time whereas Avanan takes very less time. Cisco Secure Email sometimes deletes the important emails and that is worst where as Avanan has good AI/ML integration there are very rare false positive in deleting emails.

Barracuda integrates well with Office 365 and mail flow is great. It was the first solution we found that was part of a greater suite to fit all the requirements we had. With the Email Security gateway being in the cloud, it required no extra hardware but also nothing new installed on an endpoint as some solutions require.

Incentivized

It does what they claim and then some.

Incentivized

• Improved risk mitigation by providing additional layer protection for M365.
• Easy to setup and configure. No expert knowledge required and no downtime required.
• Customizable license count. No need to buy the same number of mailbox users if you really don't want to protect some unused mailboxes.

Incentivized

• The cost of ESS for our organization is tiny compared to the amount of money we would lose if even one virus-laden PDF slipped through
• Ignoring genuine malware/phishing, the cost of ESS for our organization is tiny compared to the amount of money we save by blocking regular spam (so employees don't ever see it)
• From an administrator's perspective, putting the reins in the hands of our employees so they can look at their own quarantine (and leave IT out of it) has saved us 💵DOLLA 💸DOLLA💵BILLS 💸Y'ALL💵

Incentivized