Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. GoGuardian Admin

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

GoGuardian Admin took the pressure off of IT to deal with filtering and gave control to the building admin. No longer does IT have to check if the website is appropriate or if the building principal wants to allow it. They take care of it on their own! Put ownership of internet use back on the building admin instead of IT, since it was always a classroom management problem, not a technology problem.

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

• Web Filtering
• Chromebook Livefeed/Monitoring
• GoGuardian Admin technical support is fantastic, and is always available
• Ease of creating individual policies based on Google Admin Console OU

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.

• The system cannot inform our team about cyber bullying or harassment.
• Students can still play some games if those games are loaded to a Google Site.
• There are times when a Chromebook that hasn't been restarted in a while will not show up online. This is problematic as students do not restart as much as they should.

Incentivized

Does what we need it to do and more in a very cost-effective manner. Relatively easy to use and great customer support. They are quick and clear and will walk you through things in real time.

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.

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

GoGuardian support is the best in the business. Within seconds of the business day I can chat with a human being about any issue.

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

GoGuardian is the industry leader in this space. We have been a client for six years and have never had an issue with the product or support. We've investigated other options, but have found the feature set, ease of use, and reliability is unmatched.

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

• It has allowed us to deploy thousands of devices for home and on-premises use successfully. Without this cloud filtering, we would be stuck.
• The theft recovery piece has allowed us to get our assets back from students that have left the district or that have misused them.

Incentivized