Barracuda Networks

...The question is: if it’s this easy for a security firm to find malware being spread by the various search engines, why can’t the search engines do a better job of finding - and filtering - malicious results themselves? A copy of Barracuda’s report can be found at http://barracudalabs.com....

...According to a newly released report by Barracuda Labs, based on a two-month study reviewing more than 25,000 trending topics and 5.5 million search results, Google remains the most popular search engine used by malicious attackers, relying on poisoned keywords....

..."Google was the top source for malware primarily because of its market share," explained Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda. "Google has over 60 percent of the search market share. This is similar to how Microsoft's operating system has been known to be more targeted by attackers over the years because of its market share." ...

...According to a report by Barracuda Labs , both general and questionable activity is increasing on Twitter, due primarily to the company’s open API and easy account set-up....

...“Our study shows that attackers have serious efforts devoted towards getting in front of the billions of eyeballs that are using search engines everyday and the millions of users that are connecting on social networks like Twitter,” said Dr. Paul Judge, chief research officer and VP at Barracuda Networks....

...The IT security company 'Barracuda Networks' has cautioned Web-surfers to remain vigilant against bogus updates for Adobe Flash. The warning has come after the discovery of compromised websites offering Adobe Flash update to unwitting users....

...Barracuda Networks says it found a number of compromised websites that take visitors to an official looking Flash update page. But, I-T experts say downloading the updates could infect a computer with malware....

...Stephen Pao, vice president of product management for Barracuda Networks said, “Web application security today means more than simply providing application security protocol and content inspection.”....

...Content security, data protection and application delivery solutions specialist Barracuda Networks announced plans to broaden its virtual product portfolio to include its full line of solutions, beginning with the rollout of the Spam & Virus Firewall Vx and SSL VPN Vx. The announcement expands the company's product portfolio across a variety of delivery models, including appliance, virtual, SAAS and hybrid...

...One customer already using the virtual Spam & Virus appliance is The Computer Project, a computer sales, service and consulting business in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, which currently hosts 200 or more Web sites of local companies and constantly has to fight spam, said company spokesman Matt Warzecha. When the company moved into new offices recently, it replaced its physical Barracuda appliance with the new virtual one. "We love the fact that we don't need to have the physical appliance anymore," said Warzecha. "This allows us to not have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into physical hardware and gives us a better redundancy as everything is virtual and easy to replicate."...

...Barracuda Networks has warned web users to be wary of fake Adobe flash updates. It claimed to have uncovered a number of compromised sites in the wild that presents unwary visitors with an official-looking Adobe Flash update page...

...Barracuda Networks has warned internet surfers to be wary of fake Adobe flash updates, after it uncovered a number of compromised sites in the wild which present unwary visitors with an official-looking Adobe Flash update page...

...The founders of BSides formed it with the intention of creating a more informal gathering where presenters and attendees have plenty of time to mingle and discuss topics in depth. Just a few of the talks I recommend attending: A Mechanics View of SQL Injection by Ray Kelly of Barracuda Networks....

...According to Dr Paul Judge, chief research officer with Barracuda Networks, Ms Coffey's account hacks were probably due to a lack of security awareness on her part, as well as the use of the same password on multiple accounts. "The social media platforms of highly visible people will always be an irresistible target to hackers, whether commercially or politically motivated", he said...

...Barracuda Networks Inc., announced new features that extend the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall’s capabilities. The enhancements ensure that confidential or sensitive information is not distributed outside the organization...

...Barracuda has announced new features to its spam and virus firewall to enhance full inbound and outbound email scanning from the same appliance....

...Barracuda said that Spam & Virus Firewall allows administrators to define policies, set up separate rules for inbound and outbound filtering and review the outbound email quarantine for any policy violations before delivery...

...Issuing a news release specifically designed to deny a rumor is a rare move for any company and indicates that the speculation may have been influencing the market. That the market believes Barracuda is capable of besting a private equity firm to acquire the publicly traded company illustrates investors' faith in Barracuda's financial strength...

...Jeff Grey, IT director at General Agency Services Inc. in Mount Pleasant, Mich., manages approximately 50 users who each receive 2 GB of space on the company's Exchange Server. "The bigger a mailbox gets, the slower it gets, too," he said. Prime offenders are email attachments, but Barracuda's Message Archiver helps by copying them and leaving a stub linking to the original file, Grey said...

...Barracuda Networks’ growth trajectory in Ann Arbor shows no sign of slowing. The information technology security company, which has been hiring new workers at a pace of about one per week, recently decided it needs to add 10 people as soon as possible to fuel its growth...

..."It used to be that some businesses were small enough to not matter to attackers," says Paul Judge, chief research officer for Barracuda Networks in Campbell, Calif. "But with the volume of the attacks and the automation levels of the attacks, any business that is connected online needs to be prepared with proper security measures."...

...In a time when the Internet is used in almost every business, protecting systems and users from some of the content and applications found on the Web and enforcing Internet use policies can be quite the time consuming task. Using the Barracuda Web Filter can save a great deal of time and money in the long run by aiding in the task of keeping your environment clean...

...Stephen Pao, vice president of product management at Barracuda Networks says security should rank high in terms of priority in the overall budget. "Security should be a top-three IT budget priority for most organizations,” he explains. “Attacks and data breaches are growing more targeted and more sophisticated; therefore, without the right investments and solutions in place, an organization risks exposing confidential information, intellectual property, or other sensitive data should a breach or attack occur.” In addition, Pao says the amount of time needed to repair critical network infrastructure or to recoup data loss can be financially damaging to any organization...

...Aseem Asthana, product manager at Barracuda Networks says administrators should implement an email archiving solution that allows end users to retrieve emails from within their native email environment (such as Outlook). This can enhance productivity and reduce the extra work done by the IT group...

...Barracuda's Message Archiver now can archive calendar items, contacts and tasks from Microsoft Exchange and is the first appliance-based solution to deliver all this capability, product manager Aseem Asthana told eWEEK...

...The Barracuda Purewire Web Security Service, a cloud-based secure Web gateway, protects users from malware, phishing, identity theft, and other harmful activity online -- in effect, providing a pure wire to the Internet.

The Barracuda NG Firewall is a family of hardware and virtual appliances designed to protect network infrastructure, improve site-to-site connectivity and simplify administration of network operations...

...Today (Judge's) focus is leading the security effort for Barracuda, which has some 100,000 customers. He splits his time between the firm’s headquarters in Campbell, California and Atlanta. “I spend time with the research team looking at new viruses and how to fight them, as well as time with the data center team, dealing with bandwidth and the infrastructure side of things,” he said. Judge also works with the engineering team that builds software and deals with customers and analysts...

...Barracuda began by specializing in spam and virus filters but has broadened its products, sometimes through acquisitions, to include firewalls, backup, load balancing and other tools. Its products compete against offerings from such companies as Cisco Systems, Symantec, f5 Networks and Imperva. Not unlike Meltwater, Barracuda's goal is to persuade existing customers to embrace its new product lines.

From 2007 to today, Barracuda has doubled its customer base and number of employees, partly through six acquisitions, including a controlling stake in one public company — Phion, a firewall maker in Austria...

...The American Motorcyclist Association, a 230,000-member organization in Ohio, replaced an IBM Tivoli tape-based back-up product with the Backup Server 990. "The Tivoli product was too complex and was too difficult to train people to use, plus it required a hundred tapes," says Robert Kluczynski, director of IT at the association. The organization had trouble restoring data from the backups. Moving to the appliance allowed the organization to reduce its data management costs by 25 percent...

...Barracuda Networks, which provides a range of networking and storage security products, has made nine acquisitions since taking $40 million in financing from Sequoia Capital and Francisco Partners in 2006, including Web security vendor Purewire Inc. and firewall equipment maker Phion AG, both of which it bought in the fall. Almost all of Barracuda's purchases have been driven by the need to add another technology to its bag, rather than adding another business, Drako said. It's those types of deals that have been driving the recent acquisition activity among privately held cyber-security companies, and that's reflected in the prices...

...A recent report from Barracuda Networks highlighted another problem for Twitter - engagement. According to this analysis, large number of people joining Twitter susbsequently don't use the service very much. Much of the site's heat and light is generated by a relatively small minority of hyper-social members...

...The Barracuda Web Filter 310 provides solid protection against web-based threats, such as viruses, worms and spyware. This appliance combines a fully customizable web filter with a robust policy engine that can be configured for granular policy control across any type of environment...

..."To add valur for customers, VARs can also put policies and controls in place that limit the sites employees visit, the time they visit these sites, and the information they view on these sites - all customized to that organization. For instance, employees may be allowed to visit travel websites for business travel, but not for personal use; employees may be allowed to browse Facebook for 15 minutes, not two hours, or access the site during certain times of the day that won't detract from productivity. “By helping companies enforce policies that are deemed appropriate for the business, VARs offer a real value proposition here,” says Steve Pao, VP of product management at Barracuda Networks...

...As an alternative to remotely hosted archiving, the Barracuda Message Archiver is a hardware appliance solution that keeps everything on-premises and appeals to companies already using on-site email servers. Steve Pao, vice president of product management, says that the solution is popular with companies that recognize that archiving leads to a more efficient network...

...According to Barracuda Networks, Twitter hasn’t enjoyed a spam rate as low as 1 percent since 2006. And, given the massive amount of volume the service supports, even this 1 percent is still a significant number of spam hits...

..."We are still seeing Twitter identify 3 to 4 percent of Twitter accounts as malicious. And, meanwhile, 9 to 10 percent of accounts on Twitter are actively engaging in malicious activity," says Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda...

...Barracuda's own estimates suggest that Twitter last enjoyed a spam rate as low as 1 percent in 2006, perhaps only weeks after it was founded. Given that the service now has tens of millions of users, the absolute volume of spam is now massive even if the proportion is small...

...The social network’s popularity has received a huge boost thanks to celebrity use which prompted nearly half of Twitter’s users to sign up. But where celebrities and ordinary users are so are criminals according to analysts Barracuda Networks...

...Twitter's rise to global popularity has been pretty astonishing. It wasn't too long ago that a tweet was little more than something we would wake up to on a summer's morning, but now it carries with it a whole new meaning thanks to Jack Dorsey who turned it into the world's biggest social networking and micro-blogging phenomenon, the users of which are now sending, on average, 50 million tweets a day.

However, growth in the micro-blogging service's number of users peaked at nearly 20 percent last April, but had dropped down to 0.15 percent in December 2009, according to a new study by Barracuda Networks...

...To be sure, abuse on Twitter is on the rise: One in eight Twitter accounts was found to be suspicious, malicious, or suspended last year, according to a recent report from Barracuda Networks. And Twitter itself currently finds 3 to 4 percent of accounts to be malicious, according to Barracuda's data...

...Paul Judge, chief research officer at anti-spam company Barracuda's threat analysis lab, suggests staying away from using words and numbers that are dear to you--pets, significant others, your mother's maiden name, etc. That kind of information can be easy to find at sites like social networks, he says...

...Barracuda has published its annual report and provides some interesting insights into a variety of security, social network, email and other issues...

...Only 21% of members are “true Twitter users” according to a study of 19 million Twitter accounts by Barracuda Networks, a security, storage and networking company. Naturally, you probably have the same question I did. What’s a “true
Twitter user”? Barracuda defines it as:

Has at least 10 followers
Follows at least 10 people
Has tweeted at least 10 times...

...The majority of Twitter users are still just voyeurs. According to a recent report from Barracuda Labs(PDF), nearly three-quarters of Twitter users have tweeted 10 or fewer times during the lifetime of their accounts, and a third of all Twitter users have never tweeted even once. This doesn't mean those people have all abandoned their accounts though. 80 percent of all Twitter users follow more active tweeters no matter how active they are themselves (we're looking at you,Nate Anderson). In fact, nearly half follow more people than they have followers...

...Although Twitter is growing at a rapid rate, a new study from Barracuda Networks claims a relatively small number of the social network's users are "True Twitter Users."

Barracuda Networks defines a True Twitter User as a person who has at least 10 followers, follows 10 people, and has updated their status with at least 10 tweets. After analyzing more than 19 million Twitter accounts, it found that only 21% of the social network's users fell into that category. The remaining 79% lacked at least one of the three requirements...

...Criminals started targeting Twitter in earnest during a key period in early 2009, and security company Barracuda Labs has worked out why. During the same few weeks a key list of a-list celebrities joined the site.

According to the company's analysis, the 'red carpet' era between November 2008 and April 2009 saw 48 out of the 100 currently most popular Twitter celebs start using the service, including such notables as Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey, Ashley Tisdale, Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton and music group Coldplay...

...Twitter now boasts about 19 million accounts, but according to a new study from security firm Barracuda Labs, few are actually using them.

The research, which broke down Twitter activity, suggests the 50 million daily tweets are coming from a minority of the accounts - with only 21% listed in the study as “active users."...

...In their analysis of Twitter scams and attacks Barracuda makes the valid point that bad guys are following the flood of newbies to Twitter.  They measure “Twitter crime” as the percentage of new users who have their accounts suspended by Twitter, a peak of 12% last October.  If you assume, as I do, that Twitter is not actually very effective at identifying the accounts that have nefarious purposes I think it would be safe to assume the rate is double that: one in four Twitter accounts are not real people.

Read the latest Barracuda Labs report.  It is high on data and low on hype...

...Still, one of the other findings in the report may highlight the real Twitter landscape. Barracuda found that about one-third of the 19 million users they analyzed had never even tweeted once.  So, while the site may be filled with tons of babble, millions of users apparently are content to be silent...

...A new report out by Barracuda Networks this week confirms the security community's suspicion that the explosion in Twitter's user base in 2009 has lead to an incipient rise in cybercriminal activity at the social networking site.

Released yesterday, the Barracuda  Labs annual report took a deep dive into Twitter usage and attack trends along with its analysis of general Web and e-mail malware attack techniques for 2009...

...Delving into the report – which is available from the firm's website – reveals that most of Twitter's registered users joined the site during what it calls the 'red carpet' era (Nov 2008 to Apr 2009) when a number of celebrities such as Stephen Fry made their interest in the services very public.

...The report said that Twitter's growth rate spiked at 21.17% in April 2009, during what Barracuda calls "Twitter Red Carpet Era" -- November 2008 to April 2009 when several celebrities joined the microblogging site.

Barracuda said 27 of today's 50 most-followed Twitterers, and 48 of the top 100, began their Twitter careers during that six-month period...

...Many Twitter users mostly follow other users for updates rather than posting their own messages, a survey by Web security firm Barracuda Networks found. 73% of account holders tweeted fewer than 10 times. Many follow their favorite celebrities, and only 21% users are "true users" who have at least 10 followers, follow at least 10 people, and have tweeted at least 10 times...

...Twitter may be a fast-growing social network, but most of its 50 million accounts merely follow other users rather than posting their own messages.

It seems that Twitter is becoming more of news feed than a social network, said Paul Judge, author of the report and chief research officer at Barracuda. And that raises questions about its growth potential, as well as how the Internet phenomenon will make money...

...A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active.

The study looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: An active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and had tweeted at least 10 times. By that definition though, only 21% of Twitter users are active users...

...Barracuda Labs, a security company that says it has surveyed 19 million Twitter accounts, reports that 73 percent of Twitter users have tweeted 10 or fewer times. And 34 percent of users have never tweeted at all.

That’s a lot of quiet users, but it’s less than before: Barracuda says those numbers are down from 79 percent and 37.1 percent, respectively, in June of last year...

...Anyone who has been using social networks for the past couple of years has anecdotally witnessed an increase in malicious activity and phishing attacks. Today, a security firm released its analysis of 19 million Twitter accounts and has quantified just how rapidly malicious activity on Twitter has grown. Hint: it's been significant recently.

According to a report published today by Barracuda Labs, the percentage of accounts created each month that are eventually shut down for suspicious activity was only 1.2% in 2006. The number of those suspicious accounts grew steadily in both 2007 and 2008 - but never exceeded an average of about 2.2%...

...Twitter security has been in the spotlight in the past two years as the number of users – and attacks - soared. In a new report by Barracuda Networks (PDF), researchers analyzed 19 million accounts and found that the Twitter crime rate – the percentage of accounts suspended each month due to suspicious or malicious activity – rose from 1.2 percent in 2006 to 12 percent in October 2009...

...A study released today supports the oft stated notion that most of Twitter's 75 million registered users are less than committed to the microblogging site.

"Moreover, today there are 34% of users who have not tweeted since they created an account," said Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda Networks, in the report. "While that still seems like a fairly high percentage of inactive accounts," he noted that the percentage of inactive users is down from from 37% in June 2009, "demonstrating that people are becoming more active."...

...Twitter's security feature comes amid new data revealing the level of abuse on the social network: One in eight Twitter accounts last year was malicious, suspicious, or suspended, according to a report issued today by Barracuda Networks. The surge in celebrities joining Twitter in 2009 resulted in a major jump in spam, phishing, and other abuse on the site, according to the report.

And those numbers have remained steady to date. "We are still seeing Twitter identify 3 to 4 percent of Twitter accounts as malicious. And, meanwhile, 9 to 10 percent of accounts on Twitter are actively engaging in malicious activity," says Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda...

...News of the service comes as email security firm Barracuda Networks revealed Wednesday in a new report that one in eight Twitter accounts created in October "was deemed to be malicious, suspicious or otherwise misused and subsequently suspended."

"It's an ocean compared to the bathtub, so to speak, of malicious links showing up in direct messages," he said. ...

...Criminals started targeting Twitter in earnest during a key period in early 2009, and security company Barracuda Labs has worked out why. During the same few weeks a key list of a-list celebrities joined the site.

According to the company's analysis, the ‘red carpet' era between November 2008 and April 2009 saw 48 out of the 100 currently most popular Twitter celebs start using the service, including such notables as Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey, Ashley Tisdale, Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton and music group Coldplay...

..."A piece of software like IE likely contains 2 to 4 million lines of code," Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda Networks, told TechNewsWorld. "It's quite likely that this one fix was not the lone programming mistake that could result in an invalid pointer reference."...

...Twitter users are becoming more active, but so too are the cyber criminals targeting the micro-blogging site to infect PCs with malware, according to the latest figures from Barracuda Labs.

The security firm's annual report (PDF) revealed that the proportion of Twitter users with no followers has fallen from 20 per cent last June to 17 per cent today, and the proportion with fewer than 10 followers dropped from 80 per cent to 74 per cent...

...You probably always suspected it, but online security experts at Barracuda Labs have confirmed that Twitter is overrun with fakers and fraudsters.

The lab analysed more than 19 million Twitter accounts, both legitimate and malicious, for frequency and content of tweets, user-to-user interaction, and each account's overall activity level. It found only one in five has at least 10 friends and follows at least 10 and has tweeted at least 10 times...

...Most users have little use for their 140-character limit.

The analysis, by technology vendor Barracuda Networks, looked at 19 million Twitter accounts. It found that only 21 per cent are "proper" Twitter users, which they define as a user with at least 10 followers, following at least 10 people, and who has tweeted at least 10 times. Arbitrary perhaps, but not a particularly high bar to set, either....

...Barracuda Labs released its annual report for 2009, in which they highlight the shifts in Internet user behavior and the resulting attacker trends...

...According to Barracuda Networks the micro-blogging service Twitter is full of the worst kinds of people, that is, criminals and celebrities.

"The bottom line is this: users are more active on Twitter; more users joined Twitter in 2009 following a massive influx of celebrities to the site; and sure enough, the criminals followed the users in a forceful way causing the overall Twitter Crime Rate to spike", it said...

...Tweeters will no doubt have concerns about security after figures from Barracuda Networks indicated a rise in cyber criminal activity on the service between November 2008 and April 2009.

The number of accounts created during that period that were suspended for malicious or suspicious activity, or were somehow misused, increased by 66 per cent...

..."With the increased visibility of Twitter, the millions of fans of many of these celebrities also joined Twitter, causing the Twitter growth rate to spike -- from 2.02% in November 2008 to 21.17% in April 2009," wrote Judge in the report. "Forty-nine percent of Twitter accounts were created during the Twitter Red Carpet Era."

In a blog post , Barracuda said the report is based on an analysis of "nearly 19 million Twitter accounts. We analyzed the frequency and content of tweets, user-to-user interactions, and each account's overall activity level."...

... Tweeters will no doubt have concerns about security after figures from Barracuda Networks indicated a rise in cyber criminal activity on the service between November 2008 and April 2009.

The number of accounts created during that period that were suspended for malicious or suspicious activity, or were somehow misused, increased by 66 per cent...

...Easy, one-click restoration for researchers wasn't always the case. Since you can't trust a machine through which you've just run a piece of malware, before virtual machines existed researchers would have to wipe and reinstall the entire operating system for each thing they needed to analyze.

Today, running virus samples through a virtual machine can be automated and require almost no human intervention. That's enabled Barracuda to analyze around 3,000 software samples a day, compared with a few dozen a day without using virtual machines, says Judge...

...Winner: Barracuda Networks for Barracuda SSL VPN

As the global workplace becomes increasingly mobile – IDC expects 1.9 billion users on the internet and three billion users on the phone network by 2012 – organizations require secure, clientless remote access to internal network resources from any web browser. Typical users require the use of email, file servers, intranet websites, databases and desktop access to office workstations. With conventional VPN solutions, such as IPsec or PPTP, secure access to resources is often difficult or impossible to manage. Designed for remote employees and road warriors, the Barracuda SSL VPN provides comprehensive control over file systems and web-based applications requiring external access. The Barracuda SSL VPN integrates with third-party authentication mechanisms to control user access levels and provides single sign-on...

...NO. 4 Barracuda NG Firewall

The Barracuda NG Firewall is a family of hardware and virtual appliances designed to protect network infrastructure, improve site-to-site connectivity and simplify administration of network operations. Beyond its powerful network firewall and VPN technologies, the Barracuda NG Firewall integrates a comprehensive set of next generation firewall technologies, including Layer 7 application profiling, intrusion prevention, Web filtering, anti-virus, anti-spam and network access control. Available immediately, the Barracuda NG Firewall is offered in seven hardware models ranging from small branch office to large enterprises and datacenters as well as a corresponding offering of virtual appliances. U.S. prices range from $599 to $40,000. Barracuda Networks will be demonstrating the Barracuda NG Firewall at booth #1549 at RSA...

... According to Purewire (recently acquired by Barracuda Networks), you do it by connecting through a security gateway that inspects the user's browsing patterns and the responses that the user gets from sites being browsed. The gateway looks at the overall browsing activity and allows or blocks certain types of activity. The gateway, provided as SaaS, acts as a sort of proxy that sits between the user and the web. It covers compliance and threat issues. That means that just about anything that can go wrong with a web browsing session can be detected and managed no matter where the user is...

...The versatile, do-it-all Spam & Virus Firewall appliance from Barracuda Networks uses a multilayer approach to content filtering, with three layers dedicated to virus blocking alone. The Spam & Virus Firewall alleviates strain on the network and mail servers by winnowing out unwanted content ahead of time..

...The Web’s greatest accomplishments have become its biggest threats. Compromised sites, user-generated content and social networks challenge traditional domain-based trust mechanisms. The growth of the Web has outpaced traditional URL filters. Web applications bypass legacy file-based anti-virus engines. Search engine optimization and trending topics are used by attackers to increase their attack performance. This session reviews these shifts and new approaches to defending users online.

-- Dr. Paul Judge, CRO & VP, Barracuda Networks Inc...

...Paul Judge: VP Of Cloud Services, Chief Research Officer, Barracuda Networks
Dr. Paul Judge is a leading security technologist, having been awarded six U.S. patents and 19 other patents pending. He is a recognized authority on Internet security and most recently founded PureWire, a SaaS-based Web gateway provider acquired by Barracuda Networks in October. Previously, Judge was on the founding team of CipherTrust as CTO until Secure Computing acquired them for $300 million in 2006...

...Barracuda Networks has taken the wraps off a new technology firewall platform for distributed architectures that it claims will allow companies to enhance their firewall protection.

According to Stephen Pao, Barracuda's vice president, the NG Firewall is a unique offering in that it was designed specifically for distributed environments...

...Called the Barracuda NG Firewall, the Barracuda offering stems from technology designed by Austria-based phion AG, a firm Barracuda acquired in September 2009 after hearing buzz over the company from its reseller contacts in Europe, who alerted Barracuda to phion's dominance in Europe despite its relative low-profile and lack of name recognition here in the United States.

"It's not a product familiar to the U.S. channel, but every day phion was going head-to-head and beating the likes of Check Point, Cisco and Juniper in their core markets of Germany, Austria and Switzerland," says Stephen Pao, vice president of product management for Barracuda. "So we think that we have a really unique offering for the channel here in the us in that they simply haven't seen something like this before. The real positioning of this firewall product as opposed to other enterprise firewall products is that it is really designed specifically for distributed environments."...

...Barracuda offers businesses the NG Firewall line of hardware and virtual appliances designed to protect enterprise network infrastructure, improve site-to-site connectivity and simplify administration of network operations.

The Barracuda NG Firewall is a line of virtual and hardware appliances designed to protect enterprise network infrastructure, improve site-to-site connectivity and simplify administration of network operations. This product launch is the first since Barracuda Networks' acquisition of phion AG, a firewall provider based in Austria, in September 2009. The NG Firewall is offered in seven hardware models ranging from small branch office to large enterprises anddata centers as well as a corresponding offering of virtual appliances. U.S. prices range from $599 to $40,000...

...No. 3  Barracuda Networks 

Barracuda recently emerged as a stronger player in the Software-as-a-Service space with the acquisition of Purewire, a SaaS-based secure Web gateway provider, putting the company on par with many established SaaS providers. Down the road, Barracuda plans to offer an array of SaaS and hybrid security services that will eventually integrate Purewire's Web Security Services into Barracuda's SaaS portfolio and existing product line, with a special emphasis on remote user support...

...Meanwhile, the rising incidence — and visibility — of cyberattacks also is boosting prospects for privately held tech-security firms, says Asheem Chandna, a partner at Greylock Partners, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

Private firms with strong balance sheets and good growth prospects that might be viewed as viable candidates to float an initial public stock offering include Sophos, Barracuda Networks, Qualys, Proofpoint and Tripwire, Chandna says. He estimates 30 to 50 tech firms could go public this year, including three to five tech-security companies...

...Through its acquisition of Phion, Barracuda Networks has launched a line of seven enterprise firewalls meant to consolidate network security devices and reduce management overhead when dealing with numerous distributed firewalls.

The firewalls are aimed at the needs of a variety of orgs and priced from $599 for small branch offices to $40,000 for data centers. We spoke with Steve Pao, VP product management, who says the devices are designed to provide the services and optimization today's distributed networks need. The Phion technology was originally developed for an Austrian banking data center that needed 650 firewalls with centralized management; Phion was founded in 2000 and acquired by Barracuda in 2009...

...Derek Schauland looks at the features of the Barracuda SSL-VPN, a browser-based VPN appliance, in this product spotlight.

Remote access to corporate resources is becoming common place within many organizations. IT staff require access from the road, just in case they are out of the office and receive a help desk call. Road warriors require access to files and documents or maybe even their desktops while traveling to visit a customer. There are many ways to enable this type of access, some secure, some not so secure, but the SSL-VPN appliance from Barracuda Networks makes it very simple to provide browser-based VPN to a number of employees while working with your existing security appliances and firewalls...

... No.10 Barracuda Buys Purewire

Purchase Price: Undisclosed

When: October

Details: Barracuda hopes to hedge its bets on appliance-based security through the acquisition of cloud-centric Purewire. The plan is to create a hybrid appliance/SaaS solution offering, though analysts wonder how well Barracuda will execute...