Barracuda Networks Spam & Virus Firewall 200

Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall 200 Overview:

The Barracuda Spam Firewall is an integrated hardware and software solution for complete protection of your email server. It provides a powerful, easy to use, and affordable solution to eliminating spam and viruses from your organization by providing the following protection:

• Anti-spam
• Anti-virus
• Anti-spoofing
• Anti-phishing
• Anti-spyware (Attachments)
• Denial of Service

Powerful Complete Solution:

The Barracuda Spam Firewall is compatible with all email servers and can fit into nearly any corporate or small business environment. It is used by small organizations with as few as 10 employees and large organizations with as many as 200,000 employees. A single Barracuda Spam Firewall handles up to 30,000 active email users. Multiple units can be clustered together for even greater capacity and high availability.

The Barracuda Spam Firewall protects your email server with twelve defense layers:

• 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

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The Barracuda Spam Firewall architecture optimizes the processing of each email to maximize performance and process millions of messages per day. Unlike software solutions, the Barracuda Spam Firewall reduces the load placed on the email server by off-loading both spam and virus filtering.

In addition, all Barracuda Spam Firewall models include essential outbound filtering techniques including attachment scanning, virus filtering, rate controls and encryption. These features help organizations to ensure that all outgoing email is legitimate and virus-free.

Easy to Use:

With no software to install and no modifications required to existing email systems, installation of the Barracuda Spam Firewall is quick and easy. Once installed, the system administrator uses the intuitive web interface for monitoring and maintenance. With Barracuda Networks Energize Updates, the Barracuda Spam Firewall is continuously updated with the latest spam and virus definitions every hour keeping maintenance to the unit at a minimum and eliminating administrative overhead. Updates are provided by Barracuda Central, an advanced 24/7 security operations center that works to continuously monitor and block the latest Internet threats.

Affordable:

At Barracuda Networks, we design and build products not only for their power and ease of use, but also for their affordability. With no per user license fees, the Barracuda Spam Firewall is the most affordable enterprise-class spam and virus solution available.

Features:

Email has undoubtedly become a key tool for communications among companies worldwide. With frequent virus attacks and the alarming rate that spam fills inboxes, email is quickly becoming a less efficient means of communication. In fact, the Radicati Group, a market research firm in Palo Alto, California, predicts that by 2009, there will be 228 billion spam messages each day, representing the vast majority of email traffic on the Internet. This is simply astounding and unacceptable. It's time to take control of spam.

The Barracuda Spam Firewall is an integrated hardware and software solution that has the power of an enterprise-class solution, and the ease-of-use and affordability that businesses of all sizes demand.

The Barracuda Spam Firewall includes all the features needed to eliminate your spam and completely protect your email server from all forms of attack. Email may be blocked, quarantined, tagged, or delivered based on the policies of the organization or the preferences of the individual user.

Protection Against Email-borne Threats:

The Barracuda Spam Firewall provides comprehensive protection against the most current email-borne threats that can cripple your network if left unprotected. With our proprietary twelve-layer defense system, the Barracuda Spam Firewall optimizes performance of your email server while utilizing the following protections:

• Anti-spam. The algorithms and methods used by the Barracuda Spam Firewall are the most comprehensive and most advanced in the industry at detecting and filtering spam resulting in the lowest rate of false positives. Barracuda Networks Predictive Sender Profiling looks beyond the reputation of the sender and digs deeper into the spam campaign itself to identify anomalous activity.
• Anti-virus. By utilizing triple layer virus blocking, decompression of archives and file type blocking, the anti-virus engine in the Barracuda Spam Firewall provides complete virus protection. When new spam and virus outbreaks occur, Barracuda realtime protection will block these threats in real-time.
• Anti-spoofing. This technology prevents the use of forged or "spoofed" sender addresses on unsolicited email. The anti-spoofing feature also allows larger organizations to specify a list of IP addresses that are allowed to have a "From" address that appears from inside the organization to support multiple sites and multiple email servers.
• Anti-phishing. The Barracuda Spam Firewall provides robust protection against phishing schemes which are often used to gather confidential information about an organization or its individual users.
• Anti-spyware. (Attachments) - All attachments are scanned and any spyware executables are detected and eliminated immediately.
• Denial of Service Protection. Rate controls are utilized to stop denial of service attacks as well as dictionary based spam attacks. These rate control systems are integrated and automatic in the Barracuda Spam Firewall.

End-user Control Features:

The Barracuda Spam Firewall contains numerous end-user features that allow for individual tuning and greatly enhance the accuracy of our spam filtering.

• User Based Filtering. The Barracuda Spam Firewall can be configured to set spam policies by the end-user on an individualized basis or on a global corporate level.
• Individual Spam Scoring. The individual spam scoring feature allows end-users to set their individual thresholds for spam tolerance providing personalized control over spam policies.
• Personal Allow and Block Lists. The Barracuda Spam Firewall can be configured to allow end-users to have control over their individual allow and block lists which further reduces the chance of false positives.
• End-User Quarantine. The Barracuda Spam Firewall provides the ability to setup quarantine mailboxes where users can direct questionable email for later review. This greatly reduces the support load for large organizations.
• Digest Emails. A daily email is sent to all end-users with a quarantine account summarizing the contents of their individual quarantine mailboxes.
• Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes Integration. Barracuda Networks provides a software plug-in for both Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes end-users. With this tool, users can classify messages as spam or not spam in order to fine-tune the filtering and further eliminate any chance of false positives.

Simplified and Centralized Administration:

The Barracuda Spam Firewall features an easy-to-use Web interface, making management and administration of the appliance easy and cost effective. The Web interface allows you to define, manage and control corporate email policies from one central place.

• Multilingual User Interface. The Barracuda Spam Firewall features a user interface available in many languages including Chinese (simplified and traditional), German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Czech and English.
• Barracuda Energize Updates. A team of security engineers at Barracuda Central continuously monitors the Internet for trends in spam and virus attacks. As they detect trends, Energize Updates are created and distributed to all Barracuda Spam Firewalls, which are automatically updated with new spam rules, spam algorithms, and virus definitions. These updates require zero administration and ensure that your network has comprehensive and accurate protection even as the methods of attack change.
• Logs and Graphical Reports. System administrators can view logs and generate graphical reports to provide visibility within the organization. The Barracuda Spam Firewall can generate reports on top email users, top spam recipients, top spam senders, and more.
• Journaling. The Barracuda Spam Firewall allows support for message archiving. When a value is specified for the journaling destination address, a copy of all mail sent through the Barracuda Spam Firewall will be forwarded to that address.
• No Per User Charges. With the Barracuda Spam Firewall there are no per user charges so the system administrator no longer has to worry about keeping track of new accounts.
• Multiple Domains & Multiple Email Servers. A single Barracuda Spam Firewall can be used for multiple email servers and for multiple domains resulting in lower administrative costs.

Protection for Large Enterprises:

The Barracuda Spam Firewall is engineered to meet the specific needs of large enterprises. These models offer all the scalability, redundancy and reliability needed for large-scale deployments at an affordable price.

• Easy Integration with existing Network. The Barracuda Spam Firewall integrates with any IT infrastructure no matter how geographically or logically diverse.
• Clustering. Multiple Barracuda Spam Firewall models 400 and higher can also be clustered for automatic scalability, redundancy and fault tolerance.
• Hot Swap Redundant Disk Array and Power Supply. These features provide a total solution for reliable fault tolerant data storage management necessary for large enterprises.
• Plug and Play Installation. Deploying the Barracuda Spam Firewall is extremely easy. There is no software to install or modifications necessary to your existing email systems, greatly reducing the time and resources required for installation and ongoing support.
• LDAP and Microsoft Active Directory Integration. Directory server integration allows for single sign on, on models 400 and higher, and recipient verification, on models 300 and higher.

Model Comparison:

There are eight models of the Barracuda Spam Firewall. A single Barracuda Spam Firewall can handle up to 100,000 active email users. Multiple units can be clustered together for even greater capacity and high availability. These specifications are not limits of the system, but are the recommended capacity.

Screenshots:

The following screenshots illustrate the Web user interface of the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall.

Deployment and Administration:

Deployment:

Standard Deployment Configuration:

The standard deployment configuration consists of a single email server and a single Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall. Simply connect the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall to your network by assigning it a new IP address and changing your MX record to point to the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall. Alternatively, you may also give your email server a new IP address and give the old IP address to the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall.

Multiple Email Server Environment:

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall supports multiple email servers and multiple domains.

Fault Tolerant Barracuda Spam Firewall Environment:

For automatic scalability, redundancy and fault tolerance, you may cluster multiple Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls.

Multiple Email Server Location Environment:

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall can also be used in environments where there are multiple email server locations. For optimal performance, a Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall should be placed in each location that contains an email server. This remote clustering capability can greatly simplify control and administration.

Administration:

Configuration:

Configuration of the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall is accomplished through a simple Web-based interface that is built into the system. There is no software to install and no CDs or floppies to lose.

The configuration screens are comprehensive and provide for a large amount of customization. This customization is rarely needed because the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall comes with default settings and self-tuning parameters such that 95% percent of the options never have to be adjusted.

Statistics Reporting:

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall's administrative tools feature state-of-the-art, statistical reporting tools that give you a visual edge on spam levels in your network.

Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound Features:

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound is a mail transfer agent (MTA) that uses sophisticated email filtering and policy management to protect organizations from such risks. It's a powerful solution suitable for the largest of businesses, yet has the ease of use and affordability that smaller businesses demand.

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound includes all the features needed to eliminate your outbound spam and protect against virus proliferation.

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound is easily deployed and quickly installed. It is compatible with all email servers and can fit into nearly any corporate or small business environment. It can replace any existing outbound mail relay and sits between your client machines and the Internet. It can also be used by remote workers as a reliable mail relay.

Powerful, Enterprise-Class Solution

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound is a powerful enterprise-class solution that provides outbound email protection in three key ways:

• Stops virus proliferation
• Enforces corporate policies
• Prevents spamming

No organization, especially no ISP, wants to be the source of viruses or spam. It not only puts a tremendous strain on the company's network, but it's also damaging to the organization's reputation. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound ensures that all email leaving the network is virus-free and legitimate. It prevents people from unintentionally or intentionally using the organization's network to send viruses or spam.

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound also helps ensure that employees are in compliance with government regulations and corporate information policies. With laws that now govern how or when companies are able to disseminate sensitive information, it is critical for companies to monitor emails for regulatory compliance. But even absent such regulations, it makes good business sense to enforce corporate information policies and protect intellectual property from being inappropriately disseminated.

Affordable

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound is the most affordable solution for outbound email protection. With no per user license fees, the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound is affordable for businesses of all sizes—from small organizations to global ISPs and enterprises.

Virus Outbreak Protection

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound can identify users that have a virus and can stop it before it is disseminated, preventing viruses from being sent to users outside the corporate network. A variety of methods including dual layer virus blocking, file type blocking, and decompression of archives is used for such virus outbreak protection.

Multilingual Support

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound can detect and block outbound spam in more than ten languages and features a user interface available in Chinese (simplified and traditional), German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Czech and English.

Corporate and Regulatory Policy Enforcement

Organizations must make sure that intellectual property and other confidential information is protected. Heightened awareness surrounding government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley, have increased the need for organizations to take a more proactive role in policing what information is disseminated through email. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound is designed to enforce such policies through footer attachment, scanning and filtering, keyword and attachment blocking. In addition, the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound enables the administrator to set quarantine parameters for questionable email that can be reviewed and released, or blocked as needed. Quarantine notifications can be sent on a weekly/daily basis to alert administrator to take action against questionable email. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound can also journal messages sent through the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound.

Protection Against Spam Proliferation

In the last year a growing number of spam operations have employed unsuspecting open relays to send spam. This practice often goes unnoticed by the IT staff until problems, such as server overload or blacklisting, disrupts regular email communication. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound uses advanced rate control features to thwart zombie PCs and alert the IT staff of the affected organization any time a large quantity of email attempts to leave the network. The hijacked machine can then be shut down before the bulk of spam is sent. In addition to rate controls, the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound also uses domain restrictions, IP restrictions and user authentication to prevent outbound spam.

 

Outbound mode Standard Deployment Configuration

The standard deployment configuration consists of a single email server and a single Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound. Simply connect the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound to your network by assigning it a new IP address and changing your mail server's MTA to point to the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound. Alternatively, you may block all outbound port 25 traffic on your firewall to only allow traffic from the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound.

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall-Outbound can also support multiple email servers and multiple domains and may be used in environments where there are multiple email server locations. We recommend a Barracuda Spam Firewall-Outbound for each location that contains an email server.

Barracuda Spam Firewall FAQ:

How does the Barracuda Spam Firewall protect against email threats?

The Barracuda Spam Firewall, an integrated hardware and software solution, uses a multilayered approach to provide the most comprehensive email protection available against spam, viruses, spoofing, phishing and spyware attacks. An added benefit of the Barracuda Spam Firewall is the optimized processing of each email to maximize performance and capability to filter millions of messages per day.

Behind the industry-leading initiatives of Predictive Sender Profiling and Barracuda Real-Time Protection are 12 explicit defense layers including: Denial of Service and Security Protection, Rate Controls, IP Reputation Analysis, Sender Authentication, Recipient Verification, Virus Protection, Policy (user-specified rules), Fingerprint Analysis, Intent Analysis, Image Analysis, Bayesian Analysis, and a Spam Rules Scoring engine.

How is email filtered?

Deployed at the network perimeter, all incoming email must pass through all 12 defense layers of the Barracuda Spam Firewall before any of it can reach the intended recipients. The defense layers are grouped into two main classes: connection management, which involves dropping incoming mail connections before receiving messages, and mail scanning, which analyzes messages upon receipt. During the filtering process, emails are checked for new and familiar spammer attacks, viruses, and customized administrator policy violations. Based on administrator and user preferences, spam can be tagged, quarantined or blocked.

Why tag email? What happens to tagged emails?

Tagging email benefits organizations by easily identifying messages that meet set criteria. Tagged emails are delivered to the recipient with a customizable label, such as [BULK], that is added to the subject of the message.

Why quarantine email? What happens to quarantined email?

Quarantining emails is a safeguard that allows for examination of questionable messages prior to accepting or rejecting; typically, quarantined email does turn out to be spam. An administrator can choose two types of email quarantine: global or per user quarantine.

When configured for global quarantine, the Barracuda Spam Firewall routes all quarantined email to a mailbox specified by the administrator. When configured for per user quarantine, the Barracuda Spam Firewall stores the email locally and notifies users periodically of their quarantined email. Users can choose to delete quarantined email, forward it to their own mailboxes or whitelist the sender address to prevent future email from being quarantined. Per user quarantine is available with the Barracuda Spam Firewall 300, 400, 600, 800 and 900 models.

What are some of the underlying technologies used in the Barracuda Spam Firewall?

The Barracuda Spam Firewall uses a combination of proprietary and open source software. The Barracuda Spam Firewall operating system is based on a hardened, stable Linux kernel that has undergone strict scrutiny by top security researchers. The robust MTA is capable of handling a high number of SMTP connections and mail delivery volumes. Starting with firmware release 3.5, the Barracuda Spam Firewall MTA has a built-in journaling function that can be used in conjunction with the Barracuda Message Archiver.

If I am using Microsoft Exchange, how will the Barracuda Spam Firewall protect against “dictionary” attacks?

The Microsoft Exchange Accelerator, available on Barracuda Spam Firewall 300 and higher, uses the Lightweight Dictionary Access Protocol (LDAP) built into Exchange to verify recipients before delivering messages to the Microsoft Exchange Server.

What new technologies has the Barracuda Spam Firewall added to combat the latest spam campaigns?

In 2007 alone, Barracuda Networks has announced several initiatives against spam:

Multi-Pass Optical Character Recognition Engine: Image spam generally embeds text within images with the intent of hiding content and bypassing the text rules processing layers of spam filters. With Barracuda Networks’ industry-leading multi-pass OCR engine, Barracuda Spam Firewalls render the spammers’ tricks to hide text behind color or blurred images ineffective.

Predictive Sender Profiling: Barracuda Networks’ industry-leading Predictive Sender Profiling probes deeper into sent email and digs into the campaign itself to identify anomalous sender activity, allowing Barracuda Networks to effectively block spam typically unstoppable by traditional reputation analysis.

Barracuda Real-Time Protection: Barracuda Real-Time Protection uses an advanced set of technologies to immediately block the latest virus, spyware and other malware attacks as they emerge. Leveraging the Barracuda Spam Firewalls large and diverse customer base, Barracuda Networks leads in industry in detecting early trends and responding to email-borne threats.

How does the Barracuda Spam Firewall protect against virus threats?

The Barracuda Spam Firewall provides comprehensive protection against virus threats through three powerful layers. The first layer consists of a well-respected open source virus scanning engine. The second layer is a proprietary virus engine maintained by Barracuda Central, an advanced 24/7 security operations center that works to continuously monitor and block the latest Internet threats. The third layer is Barracuda Real-Time Protection, a set of advanced technologies that enable Barracuda Spam Firewalls to immediately block the latest virus, spyware and other malware attacks as they emerge without having to wait for a signature to be downloaded onto the Barracuda Spam Firewall.

How does the Barracuda Spam Firewall block real-time threats?

Barracuda Central engineers diligently work 24x7 monitoring spam and virus threats around the world. Since response times are crucial with real-time threats, when one is detected the Barracuda Spam Firewall uses Barracuda Real-Time Protection to mitigate these threats as they emerge without waiting for new updates.

How much time will I spend installing and maintaining the Barracuda Spam Firewall?

The Barracuda Spam Firewall is designed as an easy-to-install appliance requiring minimal administrative overhead. Without any tuning, the Barracuda Spam Firewall offers a 95 percent spam accuracy rate with a 0.01 percent false positive rate. Taking into account the six defense layers automatically tuned by Energize Updates, the Barracuda Spam Firewall is easily kept up-to-date for ongoing spam accuracy.

Will I receive a high number of false positives using a Barracuda Spam Firewall?

With no tuning, the Barracuda Spam Firewall is set to minimize false positives, typically at 0.01 percent or less – one of the lowest false positive ratings in the industry. As with any solution that allows for user customization, each customer’s false positive return will vary depending on how the administrator tunes the unit (i.e. a stricter spam score setting may result in more false positives).

What does Energize Updates include for the Barracuda Spam Firewall?

The Barracuda Energize Updates subscription provides the latest spam and virus definition updates that block new campaigns before they become an outbreak. Barracuda Central engineers constantly update spam and virus definitions and are able to remotely tune six of the 12 defense layers, thereby minimizing administration time. Energize Updates also gives you access to technical support, new firmware releases and the opportunity to participate in the Barracuda Early Release Firmware program.

Does the Barracuda Spam Firewall offer per user policies?

Per user policies are available in Barracuda Spam Firewall 300 and higher. Per user policies empower users with the ability to set their own individual scoring policies, Bayesian database, allow lists and block lists.

Can the Barracuda Spam Firewall filter outbound messages?

Yes. The Barracuda Spam Firewall filters outbound messages for viruses and basic spam scanning policies. For advanced outbound scanning, Barracuda Networks offers the Barracuda Spam Firewall-Outbound which includes different workflows for quarantining outbound email traffic for review by policy auditors.

How do I know which Barracuda Spam Firewall model is best suited to my needs?

A local Barracuda Networks sales representative can evaluate your environment based on the number of active users, email traffic and desired features. As your organization expands, the Barracuda Spam Firewall can be clustered to accommodate your additional growth.

What if I have more questions or want to see an online demo of the Barracuda Spam Firewall?

For answers to additional questions, please contact us.

Documentation:

Download the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall Datasheet (.PDF)

Download the Barracuda Spam Firewall High Capacity Datasheet (.PDF)

Download the Barracuda Spam Firewall-Outbound Datasheet (.PDF)