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.
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"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 product is not resource-intensive."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"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."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"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."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"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."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"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."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"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."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Abnormal Security is ranked 12th 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, Avanan and Tessian Enforcer, whereas Barracuda Email Protection is most compared with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, TitanHQ SpamTitan, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Fortinet FortiMail and Mimecast Email Security. See our Abnormal Security vs. Barracuda Email Protection report.
See our list of best Email Security vendors.
We monitor all Email Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.