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Barracuda vs. Proofpoint

Proofpoint lacks complete Microsoft 365 protection

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Unlike Proofpoint, Barracuda provides stronger email detection efficacy and backs up your Microsoft 365 data.

Block more advanced threats.

98%

of organizations that don’t use Barracuda have malicious messages in their Microsoft 365 inboxes.

Protect Microsoft 365 data.

70%

of IT decision-makers don’t believe they need to back up Microsoft 365. Microsoft says you should.

Block advanced email threats with best-in-class AI.

Barracuda provides your Microsoft 365 email with more effective protection than Proofpoint does. With a powerful AI engine that uses the metadata of historical emails from internal and external senders combined with natural language processing, Barracuda’s Advanced Threat Protection, AI, and Domain Fraud Protection enhance the security of your Microsoft 365 environment.  

Over the past several years, Barracuda has led the way in using machine learning (ML) to protect your organization from all 13 email threat types, including phishing, business email compromise, and account takeover. Proofpoint is inconsistent in catching complex attacks that use URL spoofing or malicious links in attachments. 

Spam

Spam costs businesses about $20 billion per year. It lowers productivity by flooding inboxes with junk mail and impacts mail servers’ ability to process messages. Spam can be used to distribute malware and in large-scale phishing attacks.

Malware

94 percent of malware is delivered via email. Cybercriminals use email to deliver documents containing malicious code or URLs that point to websites intended to trick users into clicking to download malware. Common types of malware include viruses, Trojans, spyware, worms and ransomware.

Data Exfiltration

Data exfiltration is the unauthorized transfer of data from a computer or other device. In addition to malicious attacks, data is frequently exfiltrated accidentally due to human error. The average total cost of a data breach was $3.92 million in 2019.

URL Phishing

About 32 percent of breaches involve phishing, and many phishing attacks include malicious links to fake websites. The use of URL phishing emails is popular and effective. However, only 57 percent of organizations have URL protection in place.

Scamming

Scamming accounts for 39 percent of all spear-phishing attacks. Cybercriminals use fraudulent schemes to defraud victims or steal their identity by tricking them into disclosing personal information. Examples of scamming include fake job postings, investment opportunities, inheritance notifications, lottery prizes, and fund transfers.

Spear Phishing

Spear phishing is a highly personalized form of email phishing attack that leverages social engineering tactics. 43 percent of organizations said they had been victims of spear-phishing attacks, but only 23 percent have dedicated spear-phishing protection in place.

Domain Impersonation

Domain impersonation is a high-impact attack where cybercriminals attempt to impersonate a domain by using techniques such as typosquatting. It’s often used as part of a conversation hijacking attack as it can be easy to miss the subtle differences between a legitimate email domain and an impersonated email domain.

Brand Impersonation

Brand impersonation is intended to impersonate a company or a brand to trick customers into responding and disclosing sensitive information. Service impersonations—attacks that impersonate well-known brands—account for about 47 percent of all spear-phishing attacks.

Extortion

Extortion makes up around 7 percent of spear-phishing attacks, but the cost of extortion attacks was more than $107 million in 2019. Hackers threaten to release compromising materials unless their victims pay up.

Business Email Compromise

Also known as CEO fraud or wire-transfer fraud, BEC attacks are used to impersonate an employee in the organization in order to defraud the company. While BEC attacks make up only 7 percent of all spear-phishing attacks, it caused more than $1.7 billion in losses in 2019 alone.

Conversation Hijacking

Cybercriminals insert themselves into existing business conversations to steal money or personal information. While the volume of conversation hijacking attacks is low compared to other types of phishing attacks, they are very personalized, making them effective, hard to detect, and costly.

Lateral Phishing

Attackers use recently hijacked accounts to send fraudulent and phishing emails to unsuspecting recipients within the organization. In a recent study, researchers found that 1 in 7 organizations have experienced a lateral phishing attack.

Account Takeover

A recent analysis of account takeover attacks found that 29 percent of organizations had their Microsoft 365 account compromised by hackers in one month. More than 1.5 million malicious and spam emails were sent from these hacked Microsoft 365 accounts over a 30-day period.

Previous
Next
Less Complex
1

Spam

2

Malware

3

Data Exfiltration

4

URL phishing

5

Scamming

6

Spear Phishing

7

Domain Impersonation

8

Brand Impersonation

9

Extortion

10

Business Email Compromise

11

Conversation Hijacking

12

Lateral Phishing

13

Account Takeover

More Complex
Spam costs businesses about $20 billion per year. It lowers productivity by flooding inboxes with junk mail and impacts mail servers’ ability to process messages. Spam can be used to distribute malware and in large-scale phishing attacks.
94 percent of malware is delivered via email. Cybercriminals use email to deliver documents containing malicious code or URLs that point to websites intended to trick users into clicking to download malware. Common types of malware include viruses, Trojans, spyware, worms and ransomware.
Data exfiltration is the unauthorized transfer of data from a computer or other device. In addition to malicious attacks, data is frequently exfiltrated accidentally due to human error. The average total cost of a data breach was $3.92 million in 2019.
About 32 percent of breaches involve phishing, and many phishing attacks include malicious links to fake websites. The use of URL phishing emails is popular and effective. However, only 57 percent of organizations have URL protection in place.
Scamming accounts for 39 percent of all spear-phishing attacks. Cybercriminals use fraudulent schemes to defraud victims or steal their identity by tricking them into disclosing personal information. Examples of scamming include fake job postings, investment opportunities, inheritance notifications, lottery prizes, and fund transfers.
Spear phishing is a highly personalized form of email phishing attack that leverages social engineering tactics. 43 percent of organizations said they had been victims of spear-phishing attacks, but only 23 percent have dedicated spear-phishing protection in place.
Domain impersonation is a high-impact attack where cybercriminals attempt to impersonate a domain by using techniques such as typosquatting. It’s often used as part of a conversation hijacking attack as it can be easy to miss the subtle differences between a legitimate email domain and an impersonated email domain.
Brand impersonation is intended to impersonate a company or a brand to trick customers into responding and disclosing sensitive information. Service impersonations—attacks that impersonate well-known brands—account for about 47 percent of all spear-phishing attacks.
Extortion makes up around 7 percent of spear-phishing attacks, but the cost of extortion attacks was more than $107 million in 2019. Hackers threaten to release compromising materials unless their victims pay up.
Also known as CEO fraud or wire-transfer fraud, BEC attacks are used to impersonate an employee in the organization in order to defraud the company. While BEC attacks make up only 7 percent of all spear-phishing attacks, it caused more than $1.7 billion in losses in 2019 alone.
Cybercriminals insert themselves into existing business conversations to steal money or personal information. While the volume of conversation hijacking attacks is low compared to other types of phishing attacks, they are very personalized, making them effective, hard to detect, and costly.
Attackers use recently hijacked accounts to send fraudulent and phishing emails to unsuspecting recipients within the organization. In a recent study, researchers found that 1 in 7 organizations have experienced a lateral phishing attack.
A recent analysis of account takeover attacks found that 29 percent of organizations had their Microsoft 365 account compromised by hackers in one month. More than 1.5 million malicious and spam emails were sent from these hacked Microsoft 365 accounts over a 30-day period.
Get superior detection efficacy.

Achieve superior detection efficacy.

Barracuda’s AI engine understands all the interactions that make your organization unique. Using names, addresses, relationships, sentiment analysis, large language models, and other data signals, Barracuda identifies and automatically remediates attacks with award-winning efficacy. Proofpoint’s AI requires configurations and fine-tuning to reduce false positives. You can test Barracuda's detection capabilities for yourself with our free Email Threat Scanner.

Discover the threats that Proofpoint missed with the Barracuda Email Threat Scanner.

98% of organizations with Microsoft 365 harbor malicious emails inside their mailboxes.* Discover email threats before your users do.

16,000+ organizations have used the scanner to discover 12M+ threats hiding in their mailboxes.

Get your free scan now. It’s fast, safe, and has no impact on your email performance.

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*Organizations with 100+ mailboxes
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Secure your Microsoft 365 data.

The No. 1 cause of data loss in Microsoft 365 is accidental or malicious data deletion by end users, accounting for about 70% of such losses. In addition, malware and ransomware attacks can render your data completely unusable. Although Microsoft provides recovery options, responsibility for data protection falls on its customers, and Proofpoint does not offer cloud backup for Microsoft 365 data. Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup provides comprehensive, cost-effective, and scalable protection for your Microsoft 365 data — including unlimited cloud backups for Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams — without adding to your infrastructure costs.

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Receive award-winning customer support.

Excellent customer support is a point of pride for Barracuda. Our customers have peace of mind in knowing that live people are always on the receiving end to help troubleshoot. There are no phone trees or automated service, and Barracuda does not segment support based on security levels. A strong channel partner community can also offer onsite help in over 100 countries worldwide. We’ve been recognized for delivering support that our customers love.

We looked at Mimecast and Proofpoint offerings as well, but our initial impression was that Barracuda ... had a more robust feature set.

Andreas Gross

VP IT, Tricentis

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“The bundled capabilities in Barracuda Email Protection were just right for our needs. It’s the comprehensive, integrated security solution we needed for our Microsoft 365 deployment.”

Andy Shotwell, Senior VP at Bank of Botetourt

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