Abnormal Security specializes in identifying uncommon attacks, particularly advanced phishing and social engineering attempts. Their AI analyzes email behavior patterns within your organization to detect anomalies that might indicate malicious intent. Barracuda Email Protection offers a multi-layered approach that includes traditional methods like spam filtering, malware detection, and sandboxing. Users find Barracuda effective in blocking various threats and it can also protect against phishing, but its focus is broader. Barracuda's pricing is valued for its flexibility, while Abnormal Security is praised for its strong customer service. Integrations and reporting features were areas for improvement in both products.
The summary above is based on 24 interviews we conducted recently with Barracuda Email Protection and Abnormal Security users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"One of the things that I love about them is that the setup and installation are super easy. All you do is give them access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, and through APIs, they are able to do their work. They are doing all this through APIs, so you do not have to install the software and take a month to get it all set up to even see the value of the solution. You could be up and running in less than an hour."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"What I like about Abnormal Security is that it notifies me if any of my partners or suppliers are experiencing a security breach by analyzing their database and identifying potential cyber threats."
"It does some really cool stuff that other tools aren't doing. We found it to be really effective, and the AI/ML functionality is really what differentiates them."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Essentials are it's a trusted name and is rated very high on review sites. It blocks high percentages of spam and junk email and it's in the cloud. They have hardware appliances, but this is in the cloud. The solution is very effective at blocking malware and blocking spam and this is what we are looking for. There's not a whole lot of complexity, you want a solution that is very good at blocking out all of the unwanted emails."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft. If someone deletes something in Office 365, we can get it back within Office 365, but it's difficult. Barracuda is much easier. There is a lot less management needed using Barracuda. The management becomes much easier for Office 365 and it's no longer on-prem, so there are fewer hours managing on-prem devices, servers, and things of that nature. We don't have network appliances anymore for the backup of our information."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab."
"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."
"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"I, as such, do not have anything that I do not like or would like to add, but you could argue that because they are doing it API-based, there is a chance that something could slip through temporarily before they are able to pull it out. In theory, it could happen just because of the nature of the system. They are not in line with the delivery of the mail. They are kind of asynchronous, which is a pro as well as a con. If it is synchronous, then I know it would always stop them, but because it is asynchronous, things could get through temporarily or because of some system issues on the Microsoft side or their side. It is the nature of the beast, but it is a little bit of a con."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"When we're working on something as engineers, and we find an idea or a method of doing something that would be greatly improved by doing it another way, there should be an ability for me to click the ideas button, type in an idea that I have, and submit it to a product review team or developers to have them think through the process a little bit more."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"The customer service and support could be improved if the support were available directly in Europe. Currently, the support is often managed from India, so we sometimes need to wait due to the time zone difference. It would be quicker and better if the support were provided by European staff."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Abnormal Security is ranked 9th in Email Security with 8 reviews while Barracuda Email Protection is ranked 15th in Email Security with 13 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Barracuda Email Protection is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Abnormal Security writes "Provides comprehensive email security management, effective in detecting a wide range of email threats". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Barracuda Email Protection writes "Set-it-and-forget-it type of product that doesn't require a lot of management". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cisco Secure Email and Tessian Enforcer, whereas Barracuda Email Protection is most compared with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, TitanHQ SpamTitan, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Mimecast Email Security and Fortinet FortiMail. See our Abnormal Security vs. Barracuda Email Protection report.
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