Barracuda Networks vs BitDefender

I am currently doing a review of two completely different products to act as filters for a Gentu Linux mail server.

I just wanted to post to see if anyone has dealt with either the Barracuda hardware or the BitDefender software for Linux.

I have to compare the two to see which one our company will use as a spam, spyware, and virus filter for our email system.

Has anyone used either of these systems before?
Which one do you think would be better? Right now I am leaning towards the Barracuda myself because it is a hardware filter and requires no user fees.
Has anyone had any problems with one or the other?

Thanks for any assistance you can provide me.

 

We're very satisfied Barracuda users. Currently we use one spamfirewall and plan to apply a second one for outbound protection.
We also plan to use two spyware firewalls for the http/ftp network traffic segments.

Barracuda is of course an appliance, it's not a system you build and manage yourself. Big advantage if your company has no linux knowledge. The appliance works as designed. Great anti-spam and anti virus capabilities. ClamAV performs at least as good as other virusscanners. The signature developers are mighty quick in resolving new threats.
The spam filter is a tuned spamassassin. Barracuda adds their own logic and it seems okay. We hardly experience any false pos or negs.

As for the spyware component: no experience yet, our budget has not yet been cleared, so purchase is on hold right now. The anti spyware part is not very clear to me. I don't know which technology they offer. Same for the url-blocking, I don't know their blacklist source. They do offer the option to add to the blacklist and this addition is communicated to Barracuda, so that they can add a nasty site to the blacklist.

Creating your own bitdefender system might cost you some effort. Don't forget that the hardware requirements for this kind of component are quite steep. Latency for e-mail is not the biggest problem, but the mass could be killing. Depends on your mail volume of course.
Big disadvantage of commercial e-mail scanners is the license cost: they all charge you per seat. We have 3500 users, so at $10 per person per year, we are charged some $35000. Every year. The Cuda costs us only some $6000 and a few hundred per year for support and subscription. No competition there!

 

Thank you very much for the input Meneer, I appreciate all the information you provided on the Barracuda along with the short on BitDefender.

I agree with your remark with about the workload that BitDefender would place on a server but luckly the business i work for does not possess 3500 users. lol more like 100-120 lol.

So with the figures you gave me BitDefender would at this point in time be the financial choice. But, technologically and logically Barracuda is a lot better.

I was hoping to be reviewing the sites of these products today but I had the privilege of travelling 350km today to fix some systems. (lucky me lol)

Thanks again for the input Meneer. I would still appreciate any other input from other posters thou. Thanks to anyone who gives up their time to help me out.

 

You're welcome
There are cheaper cuda's, but perhaps your user base is indeed a bit too small. Good luck!

btw: at home I use sme server with clamav and spamassassin. Good solution for smaller setups.

 

Hey Meneer,
Noticed in your first post that you said you plan to get another spam firewall for outbound protection. You may want to hold back on that for a bit.

I talked to a Barracuda rep about implemeting our own Barracuda Firewall, and he said that they should be coming out with a firmware upgrade to allow the Spam Firewall to act as an inbound and outbound system so you will not have to have two.

You should check in with them yourself to make sure, but that is the answer I got from a rep the other day.

 

Thanks
Problem is that our current cuda doesn't have all the features we need. But we'll check, good tip!

 

Check out Vircom.

www.vircom.com

They have a very comprehensive product. beats the heck out of Barracuda.

 

Well, hmm, great, nice to see more good products...
It's a lot more expensive, though

We're in the process of purchasing a couple of barracuda anti spyware firewalls too (including anti virus, url blocking, web cache), same interface as the spam firewall.