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General Information
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March 28, 2008
• Vol.30 Issue 13
Page(s) 29 in print issue
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Barracuda Appliances Protect Your Network
Stopping Threats To Email, Web, IM & More
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With its products protecting the networks of more than 50,000 companies, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, IBM, and NASA, Barracuda Networks (888/268-4772; www.barracuda
networks.com) is a world leader in email and Web security appliances. The company’s headquarters and manufacturing are in Campbell, Calif., and it has eight international offices and distributors in more than 80 countries.
What are the biggest IT-related issues facing today’s small to midsized enterprise?
“IT has taken a big shift just from assuring and improving productivity to also protecting the viability of the business,” says Stephen Pao, vice president of product management. “People are becoming increasingly aware of compliance and legal-related issues. For example, we’re seeing a tremendous need for any business that takes credit cards to be sure they’re meeting the PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards).”
The most recent PCI DSS-related concerns, says Pao, are protecting Web sites against common Web site vulnerabilities. These can include auditing of Web site code or “deployment of a Web application firewall, which protects Web transactions at Layer 7 by proxying all Web requests.”
From a compliance perspective, Pao adds, “Changes to the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) outline the need for email retention, since email can be treated as evidence.” If a company tells the court that it is unable to retrieve the backup, the judge may—as one did recently—instruct the jury to assume the worst. “So document retention, especially email and IM, has become a big issue. And because it’s a federal rule, a company or other organization of any size has to worry about following these guidelines,” says Pao.
What should Processor readers know about your company’s products?
“We have six product lines: our email and Web security appliances, plus IM protection, application server load balancing, message archiving, and Web application control appliances,” says Pao. "The Barracuda Spam Firewall protects email servers. The Barracuda Web Filter protects against spyware and enforces usage policies. Our Barracuda IM Firewall has both IM Server and IM Gateway protection. Our Barracuda Load Balancer integrates server load balancing and network intrusion prevention. The Barracuda Message Archiver preserves messages in an easy-to-retrieve fashion. And our Barracuda Web Application Firewall and Barracuda Application Gateway Web application controllers protect Web applications from network threats.”
Barracuda’s appliances come for companies of all sizes, from 50-and-fewer users up through enterprise and data center levels, according to Pao. “Our high-end models support up to 30,000 active email users and have clustering ability to protect larger numbers,” he says.
What makes your company unique?
“Our emphasis is on the whole product experience, including ease of deployment and use, and the service behind it, as well as our affordability,” Pao says. “Our products are ready to go out of the box; since there’s no software to install or network modifications to make, you can have our products up and running in 15 minutes. And our intuitive Web interface means IT doesn’t have to have expertise with a particular solution. We sell everything on a 30-day free evaluation. We have a very strong support network; our main phone number gives you a live person, not a phone tree, with support experts available 24/7.”
“Being the leader in email and Web security gives Barracuda tremendous economies of scale,” Pao notes. “We have today a network of over 50,000 sensors in 80 countries monitoring threats. And the breadth of the product line we offer is also important.”
According to Pao, from a pricing perspective, “Barracuda has broken the mold in licensing models. Our products don’t have per-user charges, just per-appliance. And for our data center, Web, and load balancer products, we don’t charge per port or per server.”
by Daniel P. Dern
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