Barracuda Email Protection vs Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Barracuda Email Protection and Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Email Security solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Email Protection vs. Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications.""The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use.""I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface.""Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises.""The initial setup was easy.""The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple.""It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pros →

"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft. If someone deletes something in Office 365, we can get it back within Office 365, but it's difficult. Barracuda is much easier. There is a lot less management needed using Barracuda. The management becomes much easier for Office 365 and it's no longer on-prem, so there are fewer hours managing on-prem devices, servers, and things of that nature. We don't have network appliances anymore for the backup of our information.""The product is easy to deploy and maintain.""I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products.""The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization.""The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365.""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.""The solution is straightforward to set up.""When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."

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"Check Point adds value with east-west protection in the data center.""I appreciate the ease of deployment and the intuitive dashboard. Even someone with basic IT knowledge can easily understand the dashboard and identify potential threats.""The stuff that it's picking up and blocking and stopping from coming into our environment has been fantastic.""The feature I find to be most valuable is very much the zero-touch provisioning. I was able to be up, operational, and 100 percent functional in less than a half an hour.""Its characteristics are adapted to the most modern threats.""The program has a nice interface and it is easy to use.""The most valuable feature of the solution is the phishing protection it offers.""The solution has a very effective anti-phishing algorithm that detects a significantly higher number of phishing emails compared to the default Microsoft solution."

More Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Pros →

Cons
"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.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data.""Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features.""Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites.""In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement.""There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types.""Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better.""The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved.""The product must enable bulk user management.""They could simplify the licensing and the pricing.""The platform's pricing needs improvement.""I would like to see better integration with other products.""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.""I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."

More Barracuda Email Protection Cons →

"It's not fully integrated with Google Workspace, and the statistics don't update in real-time.""The implementation could definitely be better.""They should consider a module that allows the customizing of reports so we can generate executive information for the client (to explain in simple language the general security situation in the SaaS environment).""The integration with Gsuite could be improved, especially when reporting the amount of emails it manages to filter.""We still get some false positives. There are times when legitimate stuff gets flagged and it could be that somebody is expecting a very important email but they don't end up getting it. On the flip side, when we alert Check Point about stuff like this, it is corrected, so they are improving. That's a plus.""From time to time, the system's administrators notice the increase in the false-positive alerts being reported by CloudGuard SaaS.""They must provide security to more email service providers.""The NAVEX metrics that I have been using on the CloudGuard dashboard cannot be exported. If they were to add report exporting capabilities on each of metric objects on the dashboard, that would be awesome."

More Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's a user-base subscription."
  • "From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
  • "Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
  • "For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
  • "The solution saves money so we have seen a return on investment."
  • "Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
  • "We pay annually. They never charged us for anything else. And they were quite a bit under that $20,000 mark. It was $19,074. And they've been pretty good about not skyrocketing the price or anything like that. It has gone up. It's gone up to $24,000 in 2020."
  • "Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
  • "On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
  • "The product is expensive."
  • "Barracuda licensing model is good."
  • "The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
  • More Barracuda Email Protection Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Having information stolen by a hacker would be more expensive than purchasing a license."
  • "Being able to keep the phishing campaigns out of my company has been ROI for me."
  • "Do a full feature evaluation (interactive) with a support person. That is what I did."
  • "The price is very good, based on what they deliver."
  • "One of the nice features is that the licensing model is elastic, so if you go over your license count, you can add users during your billing cycle and true-up later."
  • "There are absolutely no additional costs to the standard licensing fees. One of the wonderful pieces is that CloudGuard SaaS is all-inclusive in its licensing. There's no a-la-carte functionality. You're getting 100 percent of the product for the licensing that you're paying."
  • "The difference between [Check Point and its competitors] boiled down to money. Price-wise, Check Point was very good, it was very competitive."
  • "The pricing and licensing are always negotiable."
  • More Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various… more »
    Top Answer:The product must provide better malware detection. The detection algorithms don't perform the way I hope they would.
    Top Answer:I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products.
    Top Answer:Barracuda licensing model is good. The price could always be better.
    Top Answer:Regarding Barracuda Email Protection specifically, I'm quite satisfied. I think there's room for improvement in their… more »
    Top Answer:I don't even have details of the product's single license purchased by my company.
    Top Answer:I use the solution in my company to secure the users' environment so that there are no phishing attacks. The tool… more »
    Top Answer:The product offers good and easy integration capabilities with other products.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Defender for Office 365
    Barracuda Essentials
    Check Point CloudGuard, Check Point CloudGuard SaaS , Check Point Harmony Email & Office
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.

    With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.

    This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.

    Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.

    The popularity of Microsoft 365 means criminals test and design their attacks to bypass its native security features. And that means you need additional layers of defense. With Advanced Threat Protection enabled, Barracuda uses multiple layers of detection, including signature, static, and behavioral analysis, along with CPU-emulation sandboxing to accurately detect and block zero-hour targeted attacks and ransomware.

    Traditional email gateways use static rules and policies—reputation analysis, block lists, and malicious payloads—to determine if an email is malicious.

    Barracuda protects your Microsoft 365 inbox against evasive threats with a powerful AI engine that learns the unique communication patterns within your organization through access to internal and historical emails. Once it understands what legitimate emails looks like for each user, it can detect anomalies that signal malicious intent. This context-based detection is more effective at blocking targeted attacks, which are designed to bypass traditional rule-based email security.

    Check Point Harmony Email and Office is a cloud-based software offering complete protection to stop malware attacks through emails. The software is designed to provide protection for organizations using Office 365, G Suite, Google Workspace, and all other collaboration and file-sharing apps. Access permissions can be granted and custom policies can be defined for any user of choice.

    Check Point Harmony Email and Office identifies and blocks advanced malware, phishing, and ransomware attacks in real time before they reach the user’s inbox. In turn, this also helps protect sensitive business data from breaches. Harmony Email and Office was the first solution to implement machine learning, API, and AI for email security, and will ultimately prevent any attempts at account takeover via agentless multi-factor authentication.

    What is Complete Protection?

    Check Point Harmony Email and Office offers a superior catch rate for collaboration apps and cloud email with their API-based solution that detects attacks that other solutions miss, including account takeover, supply chain attacks, ransomware, and BEC. The complete protection offers:

    • Malware Protection - Recognized by NSS Labs as “most effective in breach prevention,” the solution leverages technologies to bring clean files to users within 1.5 seconds. In addition, enterprises can be safer as the solution prevents malicious messages and files from reaching the user’s inbox.
    • Data Leakage Protection - Any confidential or sensitive information will be marked and have a classified suffix added to the end of the message or file to help keep those materials safe. Those files are encrypted, and the user will be alerted to any attempted breach of those messages.
    • Phishing Protection - Before advanced phishing attacks reach the end user, Harmony Email and Office detects and blocks them, including outbound, inbound, and internal communications.
    • Account Takeover Protection - After a user connects their cloud app, the solution captures the user's history and creates a profile and a custom threat profile. In the event of a suspected account takeover, threat intelligence is leveraged through millions of Check Point-secured gateways and endpoints and is blocked.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Check Point Harmony Email and Office offers a revolutionary prevention solution to stop malware attacks through emails. Users particularly like its visibility and the ability to protect sensitive business data.

    David U., a CISO at IMC companies, notes, "It provides visibility of events, what's going on with the environment, what we're missing with our other solution, and the user behavior."

    Mantu S., a senior technology architect at Incedo Inc., writes, "We are able to protect sensitive business data and maintain regulatory compliance with advanced data leak prevention (DLP)."

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
    Helvetia, Denham Capital, Daymark Solutions, Neopharm Group
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Logistics Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company25%
    Security Firm25%
    Construction Company25%
    Educational Organization13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Real Estate/Law Firm7%
    Construction Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Energy/Utilities Company16%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Security Firm9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Real Estate/Law Firm5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business45%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business60%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise41%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise31%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    Barracuda Email Protection vs. Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Barracuda Email Protection is ranked 14th in Email Security with 14 reviews while Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is ranked 7th in Email Security with 49 reviews. Barracuda Email Protection is rated 8.8, while Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Barracuda Email Protection writes "Set-it-and-forget-it type of product that doesn't require a lot of management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration writes "Has a user-friendly dashboard, a great anti-phishing algorithm, and sandboxing for testing". Barracuda Email Protection is most compared with TitanHQ SpamTitan, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Abnormal Security, Fortinet FortiMail and Mimecast Email Security, whereas Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is most compared with Avanan, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Mimecast Email Security, Cisco Secure Email and Fortinet FortiMail Cloud. See our Barracuda Email Protection vs. Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration 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.