Barracuda 600 Spam & Virus Firewall

Appliance Review

Author: Benjamin Luck – Synworks Development Group

Synworks DG Website http://www.synworks.info/

Email: contact@synworks.info
 Contents

1.0 Introduction

2.0 The Hardware/Software

3.0 Setting up the Units for Deployment and Testing

3.1 Getting Access
3.2 Setting Up IP and NMS

4.0 Setting up for a domain for the Test

5.0 System Information and Reporting

5.0 Email Quarantining

6.0 Testing the Appliance

7.0 Product Support

8.0 The Conclusion

9.0 Product Review Rating

1.0 Introduction
Its exciting to get my hands on a spam and virus firewall appliance from Barracuda Networks.
Barracuda Networks has built its reputation as the worldwide leader in content security appliances
by offering easy to use and affordable products that protect organisations from email, Web and IM
threats.

The Barracuda spam and virus firewall appliance is a enterprise grade inbound and outbound spam
filter, anti virus scanner, email security and content management system. The Barracuda Spam and
Virus Firewall is an integrated hardware and software solution designed to protect your email server
from spam, virus, spoofing, phishing and spyware attacks. It leverage' 12 comprehensive defence
layers to provide industry-leading defence capabilities for any email server within large corporate or
small business environments.

For more technical information and ordering options, take a look at the Barracuda datasheet from
the Barracuda site. Also, the Barracuda site contains many other network appliance equipment to
suit your needs.

2.0 The Hardware/Software

The Barracuda spam and virus firewall appliance comes pre-installed on its own custom hardware
with mounting parts for rack mounting. The appliance that I am testing is the Barracuda 600 Spam
and Virus firewall, which is suited to 3000-10000 email accounts is ample for most large business
or medium sized telecommunication carriers.
Barracuda Email Security Appliance Features:
• Network Denial of Service Protection
• Rate Control
• IP Reputation Analysis
• Sender Authentication
• Recipient Verification
• Virus Scanning
• Policy (User-specified rules)
• Spam Fingerprint Check
• Intent Analysis
• Image Analysis
• Bayesian Analysis
• Rule-based Scoring
3.0 Setting up the Units for Deployment and Testing
Our next steps are to review the set-up process and get the unit ready for testing. First, I needed to
get access to the appliance. I will be trying to set the spam and virus firewall appliance up as a
proxy, in front of the some mail servers.

3.1 Getting Access

Access to the Barracuda spam and virus firewall appliance is fist done by the video console, by
hooking a monitor up to the appliance. Entering into the field the username of "admin" and the
password of "admin" (default settings). Once logged in, I am able to select the unit's network and
basic NMS settings. (IP, Netmask, Gateway, hostname, DNS etc). For this review, I will be using
the default IP addresses.
Then, to get the unit ready for configuration, I hooked it up to our laptop, with the IP address set to
192.168.200.10 and a netmask of 255.255.255.0 . Then connected the unit and after a few seconds,
a link on the ethernet status appeared.
Configuration is done by the web interface. You can use Firefox or Internet Explorer to connect to
the unit's default IP address of http://192.168.200.200:8000. Once connected, a password web page
prompt will come up. Just enter into the field the username "admin" and password of "admin"
(default settings). Then a few things need to be set in the spam and virus firewall appliance before
deployment.

3.2 Setting Up IP and NMS

After clicking on the "Basic" link in the top menu, a selection of menu options will appear below.
Clicking on the "IP Configuration", brings up the basic NMS and IP settings of the spam and virus
firewall appliance. You can double check your configuration for the network and NMS settings
here.
If you have run the Barracuda console setup, the settings entered in the assistant will appear in the
fields of this section. You can double check or change the basic network configuration and basic
NMS settings here.

4.0 Setting up for a domain for the Test

Clicking on the "Domain" option in the top menu bar, brings up the Domain Manager screen. This
is were I add and configure the email domains I want to filter and manage.

I enter the domain name (example.com) in the "New Domain" section. Then hit the "Add Domain"
button. Then I can click on the manage link on my domain to manager the mail routes.
Now all I have to do, is set my domain MX and SPF records to point the to the Barracuda
appliance. This can take up to 48 hours to propagate properly, depending on the DNS set-up. Also, I
should not forget to open port 25 on the firewall to the Internet for mail delivery.

5.0 System Information and Reporting

Clicking on the "Status" option under the "Basic" section in the top menu, brings up a summary of
the running system. The summary page displays various runtime statistics, hardware information
and general email statistics of the appliance.

There is also, various reports and statistics available under "Reports" option under the "Basic"
section in the top menu. The selection of reports are quite varied and comprehensive. So many
report types, it was a bit over the top, but at least there is a report type for everyone.
6.0 Testing the Appliance

I tested the spam and virus firewall appliance over a one week period with a active domain with
about 4000 email accounts. Above is a screen shot of the statistics from that test. I found no false
positives, so I am sure that the information is accurate.

Spam Statistics:
Email Total Spam/Virus Blocked Percent of Spam blocked

100,928 87,395 86.59%

7.0 Product Support

Barracuda Networks provides support services to help make your Barracuda spam and virus
firewall implementation successful. Enterprise email systems are critical business applications, so
Barracuda Networks support is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to respond to your needs.

8.0 The Conclusion

The Barracuda spam and virus firewall appliance is an excellent product for Email security
applications and anti spam applications. Fast, reliable and with trusted server hardware, this makes
the unit very useful for mission critical Email applications.
Pros
• Very rich feature set.
• Easy to use support web interface as well as administrator interface.
• Has email security and policy features.
• Low administration requirements.
• Easy to configure.
• Can Cluster.

Cons
• Slightly Clunky Web Interface.
• Only one power port (no power redundancy on this unit).
From my professional experience, this product is one of the better spam and virus firewall appliance
on the market. I found only a very few false positives issues and the email filter removed more
spam than most open source solutions that I has seen.
The support for the product is good, with sales and engineering staff quick to solve technical
support issues and field product orders.
9.0 Product Review Rating
This is a rating from my in-house and field testing. With a rating out of 5 stars.
Reliability:

Ease of Setup:

Performance:

Price Competitive: