Barracuda CloudGen Access

My main use case for Barracuda SecureEdge is for Microsoft 365, as it secures user access to applications like Salesforce, AWS, and Microsoft 365, but primarily it was used with Microsoft 365 when I utilized it.

Barracuda SecureEdge helped with securing user access to Microsoft 365 by filtering internet content and blocking websites, as sometimes employees attempt to access sites they shouldn't. It protects us and a lot of the applications, and some of the other things we used it for would be deploying internet to new branches, whether it was a temporary site or a permanent one.

My use case with Barracuda SecureEdge includes that it is really good for rapid office onboarding, as once you deploy internet, it is good for centralizing security control so you can have a small IT team manage and update security policies for thousands of users all over the world from just one dashboard, which is pretty good and actually excellent.

The best features Barracuda SecureEdge offers in my experience include application control, which you can use for thousands of cloud and local applications; for example, it prioritizes Zoom or it can block high bandwidth entertainment. Zero trust verification is also vital, as in this age of cyber attacks and cybersecurity, you can check for user identity and device health, which is something you really want within the cloud realm in particular, as well as sandboxing. With the cloud, if there are any kind of strange files or suspicious links, which are frequent unfortunately, it works for that.

Out of those features, I would say that application control has had the biggest impact for me, especially when you are working with Microsoft 365, as you do want to have that control when you may have thousands of users from a global perspective, and then you have a lot of malicious intent, so having that kind of singular control stands out, which I think many administrators or engineers would agree on.

Barracuda SecureEdge has positively impacted my organization with its granular application control, allowing you to identify users with local apps or cloud from a global perspective, prioritizing a lot of tools or blocking high bandwidth, and zero trust verification lets you check user identity while continuously evaluating risk to block any threats before granting access. I particularly appreciate the sandboxing feature because many people still click on links, and with this feature, you have a secure virtual cloud environment before they can even get to a user, which I think is a really nice feature for Barracuda SecureEdge.

I cannot think of anything off the top of my head for improving Barracuda SecureEdge; it just needs some fine-tuning. In my experience working with it, it has features that deal with cyber threats and unintentional cyber threats with the sandboxing to prevent users from possibly clicking on suspicious links, and single pane management gives you your centralized dashboard to manage security rules and review threats while tracking network performance on a global scale.

The only small improvement I can think of for Barracuda SecureEdge is if it were free, but that is more of a joke. I really do appreciate the product, and at the moment, I cannot think of anything that I have a complaint about.

I cannot think of any improvements needed for Barracuda SecureEdge; the upgrades or rather additions they made were really solid, showing they are on top of it, which further impresses me about Barracuda, as they address emerging needs in the cyber world effectively.

I have used Barracuda SecureEdge for maybe a few years.

Barracuda SecureEdge is absolutely stable in my experience, with no complaints about stability.

The scalability of Barracuda SecureEdge is dynamic; it is very easy to implement and has no problems in that regard.

I did not have any particular problems with customer support for Barracuda SecureEdge, so they are good with their support.

I did use other solutions before Barracuda SecureEdge, as when you are working in MSP, you can have a lot of different things within the infrastructure. NordLayer was something that was used, as well as Palo Alto, Fortinet, and Cloudflare, all depending on the customer and environment, because it was an MSP situation. However, Barracuda SecureEdge was brought in specifically for Microsoft 365 cloud and Azure.

I have seen a return on investment from Barracuda SecureEdge, as it is very easy to set up, featuring zero-touch configs for physical branches and built-in multi-link internet optimization, which I think is great. Many admins give it a high rating, and I have not seen anyone rate it as a five, six, or seven—if an administrator or engineer gives an application an eight or more, then it is very good, which it really is. Most of us will have multiple complaints, but in this instance, Barracuda SecureEdge is a very solid tool that keeps abreast of cyber threats and is constantly improving their applications.

Before choosing Barracuda SecureEdge, we evaluated other options such as Meraki, which I believe is under Cisco, Perimeter, and Zscaler.

Barracuda has added some major updates, including generative AI that gives admins the ability to track shadow AI tools and content inspection, among other things they have expanded their global infrastructure with access to POP regions in India, Germany, and maybe a few other countries.

I chose a rating of nine out of ten for Barracuda SecureEdge because it is a phenomenal product, and I really appreciate working with it, especially with all the various features and the improvements they have made or additions, particularly with AI. I believe they have enhanced ZTNA capabilities, which will add multi-tunnel support, meaning users will be able to connect to resources across multiple cloud points of presence in a single session, which is impressive.

Regarding Barracuda SecureEdge's AI capabilities, it has shadow IT controls that can catalog unauthorized SaaS apps being used by employees and gives the IT team a chance to block them, which is necessary to prevent cyber attacks. You have AI tool management that inspects internal and external traffic, mapping out AI usage risk, allowing administrators to block or restrict generative AI prompts and prevent uploads of any proprietary files from the company. Additionally, data loss prevention monitors outbound traffic, detecting and stopping unauthorized transmissions of sensitive data.

I do not have an issue with Barracuda SecureEdge's AI capabilities; the AI content filtering is really good as it looks at the text and queries from search engines, quickly categorizing risks such as harassment or reputation damage for a company. Profile accuracy is solid, and it is highly accurate, which means it can scan dynamic text pages. One of the biggest things is shadow AI, as it uses DNS telemetry to identify AI tools being used by employees.

I was not involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Barracuda SecureEdge, as my involvement was focused on testing it.

My advice for others looking into using Barracuda SecureEdge is to definitely do your due diligence for research and testing, and to understand your organization's needs and what it is being used for, as cost is a factor, and you have to discuss sometimes about cost versus what it would cost the company in the long run, focusing on the needs for cloud, on-site, or hybrid setups, and how many users are involved.

For virtual appliances, Barracuda SecureEdge is very fluid for on-prem and private cloud setups, with virtual instances capable of scaling horizontally across hypervisors, and the maximum configuration ranges from the VT100 to the VT5000 instances. I would rate Barracuda SecureEdge a solid nine on a scale of one to ten.

I am familiar with Barracuda SecureEdge. I have been working with Barracuda SecureEdge in my organization for more than three years.

What I appreciate about Barracuda SecureEdge is the next-generation firewall capability. When I compare it to Azure firewall, Barracuda SecureEdge does not convert the source IPs, so I can determine what the source of each request is. Azure firewall cannot provide this information, and I cannot find out where a request is coming from. The extra features of Barracuda SecureEdge stand out because of this.

When you test something, you can easily find out where a connection does not work. When it is a routing issue, you see not only that it is not working, but you can also see that the rule is successfully going through while the answer is not coming back. You can see the response, and if the response is not coming, then you have to wait until timeout occurs, and then you receive a timeout connection error, but the rule was successful.

The networking around it makes it easier to find out where the issue is.

The management of Barracuda SecureEdge is an area for improvement. The GUI is not very appropriate and is not easy to use. You have to learn to configure it, as you cannot copy-paste something into it.

The handling is not easy, and it is not browser-based.

We do not currently utilize Barracuda SecureEdge's centralized management feature, but if we would use more appliances in different locations, then we would implement this.

We know that Barracuda SecureEdge has a threat intelligence function that we could turn on, but we did not purchase it. We use Defender for that purpose instead. It costs extra to activate that feature.

It has been more than a year ago since we last explored those solutions.

I am not certain if we use automated security policy enforcement. I do not know how zero-touch deployment of Barracuda SecureEdge has affected our multi-location security.

Their support is good. As of the last times we contacted them, we could easily fix problems, and they were very responsible.

We tried Trend Micro before, but Microsoft solutions are not the only products we are using. We have explored other vendor software as well, including Cisco, Oracle, Palo Alto, Sophos, and Fortinet.

It was quite easy in terms of deployment when implementing Barracuda SecureEdge. The appliance itself is quickly deployed, but the rules change each day, so it took more than a day to finalize all settings.

We do not have a dedicated team for deployment. It was done in-house with our own efforts. I was also involved in the process. Two and a half staff took part in the implementation, including myself. We borrowed one person for a few hours, which explains the half person involved.

There are no other solutions besides a firewall in Asia where we use Barracuda SecureEdge. I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.

My main use case for Barracuda SecureEdge is secure connectivity for branch offices and remote users. We use it to manage network security policies centrally, secure VPN access and ensure consistent protection across multiple locations.

Barracuda SecureEdge offers centralized cloud management, Zero Trust Network Access and secure SD-WAN as its best features. Together they make it easy to manage security policies, securely connect remote users and maintain reliable connectivity across multiple locations from a single platform.

Centralized cloud management has had the biggest impact for me. It simplified policy management, reduced the time spent on administration and gave us better visibility across all locations. As a result, our team can respond to issues faster and manage the environment more efficiently.

Barracuda SecureEdge has provided a good balance of security, connectivity and ease of management. The platform is very easy to use, and the centralized management capabilities have helped simplify our day-to-day operations. We especially appreciate having networking and security features integrated into a single solution which reduces complexity and improves visibility across the environment.

Baracuda SecureEdge has positively impacted my organization by improving operational efficiency. It has simplified network management, reduced administrative effort, enhanced visibility and helped us maintain consistent security across our environment.

The main area for improvement for Barracuda SecureEdge would be more advanced reporting and analytics, additional documentation for complex deployments and further simplification for some advanced configuration workflows. The platform works well overall, but these enhancements would make administration even easier.

Beyond reporting improvement, I would like to see a more customizable dashboard, enhanced alerting options and additional troubleshooting guidance. These changes would make day-to-day management even more efficient and straightforward.

I have been using Barracuda SecureEdge for about six months.

Barracuda SecureEdge has proven to be stable and reliable. It has improved consistent performance for security connectivity and remote access with minimal operational issues.

Barracuda SecureEdge is highly scalable. The centralized cloud management makes it easy to support additional users, locations and security requirements while keeping additional administration simple and consistent.

The customer support for Barracuda SecureEdge has generally been responsive and knowledgeable when we needed assistance. Most issues and questions have been handled within a reasonable timeframe, and the engineers have been able to provide useful guidance during troubleshooting and implementation activities.

We previously used a more traditional on-premises networking and security solution. The main reason for switching to Barracuda SecureEdge was to simplify management, improve visibility and reduce the operational overhead of managing multiple sites and remote users.

We have seen a positive return on investment, primarily through time saving and reduced operational overhead rather than directly headcount reduction. The centralized management platform has significantly reduced the time spent on routine administration, policy updates and troubleshooting. While I don't have exact financial figures, I estimate that routing network administration and policy management activities require roughly 30 to 40% less effort than before, allowing our team to focus on higher priority projects rather than day-to-day maintenance.

I'm not directly involved in the purchasing decision, so I cannot comment on exact pricing figures. However, from an operational standpoint, Barracuda SecureEdge has provided good value for the functionality it delivers.

Before choosing Barracuda SecureEdge, I wasn't directly involved in evaluating other options, but I know that multiple leading networking and security vendors were considered. The final decision was based on functionality, ease of management and overall fit for our requirements.

I would advise others looking into using Barracuda SecureEdge to run a proof of concept and focus on how the platform fits their operational needs. The centralized management and integrated security features are strong benefits, especially for organizations managing multiple sites or remote users. It is a solid solution that is straightforward to deploy and manage. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.