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Barracuda Web Security and Filtering vs Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th)
Barracuda Web Security and ...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
27th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Filtering (5th)
Sangfor Internet Access Gat...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Web Security and Filtering is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG) is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Wealie Antar - PeerSpot reviewer
It comes with useful policy creation features but needs to improve its outdated tech and poor support
Apart from that, considering other tier-one applications, like Next-Generation Firewall, they also have web security in-built within their appliances or applications. Barracuda is still lagging behind in features like that, so they need to update if they want to be in the top spot. Other features I'd like to see in Barracuda Features are ease-of-use for remote users. If you are a roaming user using an organization laptop, the organization has the right to apply the policy. When you are on-premises, you are opening the policy, not out-of-premises. The application that Barracuda Web Security Gateway provides is pretty clumsy and not very easy to work with, and they need to develop that. Either they provide a test platform that redirects the traffic or vice versa. Moreover, the database is pretty average. Barracuda needs to enhance the database to stop unsolicited traffic. Reporting also needs to be quicker than it is. Barracuda doesn't give you any flexibility to provide reports to higher management. Organizations like us need to do a lot of reporting. When we submit our quarterly report, other appliances allow us to customize or get the reports in a way Barracuda can't because it is rigid with its reporting. Barracuda needs to give users the flexibility to create their reports. The reports offered by the solution are just fine. Finally, acceleration. Right at this moment, most websites are dynamic. For example, organizational websites get updated once a month. If Barracuda can help reduce bandwidth usage and accelerate browsing performance by analyzing these sorts of sites and doing their catching technology work accordingly. Barracuda should also include DNSSEC, which offers strong protection for web security and is offered by competitors. Barracuda should also up their game for scanning and sandboxing. Likewise, their signatures need augmented intelligence or machine learning because you won't always be able to appraise things, and sometimes you have to go beyond that. You need to block it through its behavior.
Muhammad Asif Shaikh - PeerSpot reviewer
Designed to provide comprehensive and secure internet access with high visibility into users
After my purchase, I noticed a need for improvements, particularly in the area of identifying the source user of the device, which can sometimes roll back to the base. Additionally, there were challenges with SSL gate traffic, which wasn't functioning as effectively as expected. Even though there have been fixes to these issues, they should be inherent to the product and need further attention. These aspects, especially sub-features, aren't very robust and seem complex. Regarding integration, while Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG) integrates well with its own products, its compatibility with third-party tools like QB is limited. There's room for improvement in making protocols compatible with various third-party products.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"It is straightforward to deploy and manage."
"The ease of use. It's pretty easy to use and navigate the UI... to either block or whitelist a web address."
"I have found the most valuable the ability to have insight into our web traffic and control its flow."
"Barracuda Web Security and Filtering efficiently blocks phishing emails and provides flexible policy settings."
"The support is fantastic."
"I like that it does a lot of malicious content and is easy to manage. There are a lot of checkboxes, and you can add your own URLs or get it preconfigured."
"The solution is very simple to use and implement."
"The most valuable features are Barracuda's policies for filtering various websites according to the organization's policies and blocking traffic for any P2P application like torrents."
"The tool has comprehensive reporting capabilities, making it a convincing choice for potential customers."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most significant aspect is the control it offers over internet traffic, like managing computer access to specific sites such as Facebook. I find particular value in its ability to control the depth of internal traffic, enabling actions like blocking specific file extensions on social media or specific IPs. This control by categories is a standout feature for us in Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG)."
"The solution is interoperable and has centralized management."
 

Cons

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"Considering other tier-one applications, like Next-Generation Firewall, they also have web security in-built within their appliances or applications. Barracuda is still lagging behind in features like that, so they need to update if they want to be in the top spot."
"This solution is substantially more expensive than the competitors out there, including Titan HQ or Limecast."
"Considering other tier-one applications, like Next-Generation Firewall, they also have web security in-built within their appliances or applications. Barracuda is still lagging behind in features like that, so they need to update if they want to be in the top spot."
"They need to provide a Sandbox to safely examine phishing links within emails without infecting our network. Also, I would like more end-to-end email tracing for a clearer understanding of why an email was blocked or not blocked."
"It doesn't allow adding DNS filtering for off-site clients."
"Our problem is that it's a virtual appliance and we're moving to a new platform and, for whatever reason, we can't move it as it is... When we were migrating our virtual machines from the old to the new system, we determined rather quickly that it wouldn't migrate over."
"The AD agent is an issue which my customers and I have encountered. Sometimes it refuses to start and, only as time goes by, does it become apparent that things are not working the way they should."
"The price could be better."
"The solution's logging system should be improved because its logs are not precise and are a little confusing."
"We encountered an issue where the IAG could not connect to IBM QRadar to provide the necessary logs."
"In Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG), its speed is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"After my purchase, I noticed a need for improvements, particularly in the area of identifying the source user of the device, which can sometimes roll back to the base. Additionally, there were challenges with SSL gate traffic, which wasn't functioning as effectively as expected. Even though there have been fixes to these issues, they should be inherent to the product and need further attention. These aspects, especially sub-features, aren't very robust and seem complex. Regarding integration, while Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG) integrates well with their own products, its compatibility with third-party tools like QB is limited. There's room for improvement in making protocols compatible with various third-party products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"Barracuda products are cheap."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"The price could be better. Barracuda started adding more features at the end of 2022. There was no price increase if you bought the maintenance package before the end of 2022. If you signed a three-year contract, you are lucky because there won't be a price increase on those features. Their pricing has increased if you wanted to install all of their features. But they are segmenting. You can buy the whole group, or you can get pieces. But it's tedious. The cost is getting higher than it should."
"The pricing and licensing are comparatively reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is neither cheap nor expensive."
"It is one of the reason for choosing it over other available products. However, recently, this year, there have been recurring concerns. I believe we might consider migrating to another solution."
"I rate the product pricing a five or six out of ten on a scale of one to ten."
"The solution’s pricing is cheaper than any other solution."
"The cost varies with models starting from $2,000 a year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
I have a couple of thoughts for improvement, but usually when I address them with my rep, they put it into the featur...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We use it primarily for simpler filtering because we're a K12 entity.
What do you like most about Barracuda Web Security Gateway?
The solution is very simple to use and implement.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Web Security Gateway?
They need to provide a Sandbox to safely examine phishing links within emails without infecting our network. Also, I ...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Security Gateway?
Mainly, I use it for blocking suspicious emails, such as malware or phishing emails, so they don't pass through our e...
What do you like most about Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG)?
The solution is interoperable and has centralized management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG)?
The tool is cheap compared to American brands. When compared to Blue Coat, Sangfor offers superior value in terms of ...
What needs improvement with Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG)?
The solution's logging system should be improved because its logs are not precise and are a little confusing.
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Barracuda Web Security Gateway, Barracuda Web Filter
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Citizen Farmers Finance, Osoyoos Credit Union, Supreme Services, Camden County Technical Schools, Frederick County Schools, Pine Belt Mental Healthcare, Paulsboro Public Schools, Dysart Unified School District, St. Michael's Grammar School, Southfield Schools District, Total Threat Protection - Wade Ford, Alain Pinel Realtors, Southfield Public Schools, Major League Baseball (MLB)
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Security and Filtering vs. Sangfor Internet Access Gateway (IAG) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,042 professionals have used our research since 2012.