Whitepapers

• Anti-Virus Technology
• When Reputation is Not Enough: Barracuda Spam
  & Virus Firewall Predictive Sender Profiling
• Comprehensive Email Filtering

Documentation

• Datasheet

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 & Virus 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 & Virus 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 & Virus 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 & Virus Firewall optimizes performance of your email server while utilizing the following protections:

• Anti-spam.  The algorithms and methods used by the Barracuda Spam & Virus 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 & Virus Firewall provides complete virus protection. When new spam and virus outbreaks occur, Barracuda Real-Time 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 & Virus 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 & Virus Firewall.
  
  

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

• Multilingual User Interface.  The Barracuda Spam & Virus 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 & Virus 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 & Virus Firewall can generate reports on top email users, top spam recipients, top spam senders, and more.
  
  
• Journaling.  The Barracuda Spam & Virus 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 & Virus Firewall will be forwarded to that address.
  
  
• No User Charges.  With the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall there are no user charges so the system administrator does not have to worry about keeping track of new accounts.
  
  
• Multiple Domains and Multiple Email Servers.  A single Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall can be used for multiple email servers and for multiple domains resulting in lower administrative costs.
  
  

Protection for Large Enterprises
The Barracuda Spam & Virus 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 & Virus Firewall integrates with any IT infrastructure no matter how geographically or logically diverse.
  
  
• Clustering.  Multiple Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall 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 & Virus 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 Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall 400 and higher, and recipient verification, on Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall 300 and higher.