Barracuda Networks has issued four key announcements at the Secured.21 Customer Conference. The announcements revolve around the cybersecurity trends and challenges faced by today’s businesses, as well as Barracuda’s latest cyber-secure offerings, notably its cloud-native Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).

Barracuda Releases “The State of Network Security in 2021” Report

The first of Barracuda’s major announcements is the release of its “The State of Network Security in 2021” report, in which the Security, Application Delivery and Data Protection Solutions vendor surveyed 750 IT decision-makers in charge of their organisation’s networking, public cloud and security to find out their thoughts on cloud adoption, homeworking and cybersecurity. Most notable among the study’s key findings is that network breaches, ransomware attacks and remote-work challenges necessitate the need for cloud-native SASE deployments.

Other highlights from the report are the following:

• 81% of respondents said their organisation was victimised by a security breach at least once in the last year.

• Companies with staff working predominantly from home had a significantly higher network security breach rate (85%) as opposed to companies with staff working predominantly in the office (65%). 

• 74% said their organisation was victimised by at least one ransomware attack in the last year.

• On average, only 14% of employees at the businesses surveyed currently work in the office all the time.

• 97% of respondents with company-issued devices share their home internet connection with other members of their household, thus increasing the risk of a breach.

• 73% of companies with all apps in the public cloud have already deployed SD-WAN, twice as many as companies with only a few apps in the public cloud (37%).

• 68% of companies with all apps in the public cloud have deployed Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA), while just 38% of companies with only a few apps in the public cloud have deployed it.

• On average, organisations have 31 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps deployed.

• On average, respondents said 64% of their traffic is directed to public cloud providers.

“Organisations are experiencing a high level of network breaches and facing ongoing connectivity and security challenges as they adapt to hybrid work environments,” said Tim Jefferson, Senior Vice President, Engineering for Data, Networks and Application Security at Barracuda. “But, they are realising that moving to SaaS applications and the public cloud improves both the user experience and security, so they’re starting to embrace new SASE technologies.”

Barracuda Launches SASE Platform

The release of Barracuda’s cloud-native SASE is in line with another key finding in “The State of Network Security in 2021” report, which is that over 80% of the respondents admitted to being open to deploying a SASE solution that runs natively in their preferred Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud vendor as opposed to a third-party offering that necessitates another cloud solution.

“As businesses move assets to the public cloud, it makes sense to consider going with SASE offerings that are cloud-native,” said Tim Jefferson, SVP, Engineering for Data, Network and Application Security at Barracuda. “That way there's proximity between network access entry and where the assets are, as well as the benefit of the global public cloud architecture.”

Barracuda’s cloud-native SASE platform will enable businesses to control access to data from any device, anytime, anywhere and brings together Secure SD-WAN, Firewall-as-a-Service, Zero-Trust Network Access and Secure Web Gateway technology from Barracuda for complete SASE convergence. The platform will also include Barracuda CloudGen WAN and Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, which will:

• Enable security services on customers’ cloud hubs, in addition to being able to run them directly on their site devices.

• Improve application performance considerably with dynamic Forward Error Correction (FEC), extending SD-WAN benefits to branches with single ISP connectivity.

• Provide flexible secure remote access capabilities, thus minimising latency with point-to-cloud connectivity.

• Streamline OT/IoT deployments by enabling scalable connectivity and out-of-the-box security, with Barracuda Secure Connector now able to network directly with CloudGen Firewall or cloud hub.

Additionally, Barracuda will be integrating its ZTNA product, Barracuda CloudGen Access, with its cloud secure web gateway product, Barracuda Content Shield. The integration of CloudGen Access and Content Shield features common identity, client and installation.

“The SASE platform from Barracuda provides value to businesses that have cloud-first priorities to move network infrastructure, routing, security, and remote access to the public cloud,” said Stefan Depping, Managing Director at GmbH. “We’re looking forward to working with Barracuda and our mutual customers on how we can best support them on their SASE journey.”

Barracuda Now Offering Expanded Incident Response

Underpinning Barracuda’s commitment to enhanced cybersecurity, the company has also launched expanded incident response capabilities to help customers proactively identify threats and address them quickly and effectively.

These capabilities are available as part of the Barracuda Total Email Protection offering, a suite of powerful security solutions that delivers comprehensive email protection. Barracuda's advanced email protection solutions, including incident response, added 3,400 new customers in FY2021, which ended on the 28th of February 2021. Incident response is also available as part of the ECHOplatform, a management and configuration console that enables MSPs to easily provide Barracuda's Total Email Protection suite of products on behalf of customers.

“Malicious emails may end up in a user’s mailbox, and when they do, they need to be addressed quickly. Many organisations lack the information and tools security admins need to address these incidents, which results in a manual, inaccurate, time-consuming process,” said Don MacLennan, SVP of Engineering and Product Management, Email Protection at Barracuda. “The expanded incident response capabilities address this and help customers easily create custom workflows to automate their email response, saving them time and ensuring a consistent and efficient response to email threats.”

This security expansion further validates Barracuda’s high standing in the “The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Email Security, Q2 2021,” where the company received the highest score possible in the deployment options, content processing capabilities, incident response, scalability and reliability and support and customer success criteria.

“We asked Barracuda for a simplified way to run incident response playbooks; we are so excited that they’ve delivered,” said Brian Morris, Gray Television. “It’s a testament to how Barracuda listens and works with customers to help us solve the issues we are facing with regards to protecting our business information and our people’s sensitive data.”

Also Announced: Barracuda Data Inspector

Last but not least, Barracuda also launched Barracuda Data Inspector, a cloud-based security solution with powerful data classification capabilities that help end-users identify different types of data – such as Personal Identifiable Information (PII), user credentials and credit card information. These capabilities can also help customers determine whether data has been shared internally or externally as well as where it is stored so they can act on it accordingly.

Like the SASE platform, Data Inspector is another cloud-based solution that aims to address the growing issue of data protection, as the company discovered in another one of its reports, “The State of Office 365 Backup.” This study, in particular, asked IT decision-makers worldwide for their opinions and perspectives on Office 365, data security, backup and recovery, SaaS solutions and a variety of other related topics. Its relevant findings are as follows:

• Data protection is both a security issue and a privacy concern.

• More than 7 in 10 respondents were concerned about compliance with data privacy requirements. 

• 72% of respondents were concerned that their Office 365 data could be the target of ransomware.

• 52% said their organisation has experienced a ransomware attack.

OneDrive and SharePoint deployments can be storing sensitive data, which are unfortunately at risk of getting breached. These deployments can also be hosts to dormant malware, viruses and ransomware that can go undetected by native security, before being activated with one wrong click. Data Inspector addresses these vulnerabilities, and also accomplishes the following:

• Create data classifiers; identify specific information types, such as employee or student IDs, project codenames, and other proprietary information.

• Find out if data has been shared internally or externally.

• Identify malware, viruses, and ransomware stored and get rid of it at the source.

• Receive automated notifications and redacted previews of classified data.

• Alert users when they attempt to store data that might be considered sensitive.

“Barracuda Data Inspector is next-generation data security that makes it easy to identify and secure an organisation’s most critical information,” said Jefferson.

“We’re very excited about Barracuda Data Inspector. Customers want to be able to identify sensitive information like credit card data that is improperly stored creating greater risk of data leakage,” said Chris Riley, Director at System Source. “With Barracuda Data Inspector, we’ll provide a powerful tool for our customers to help secure their businesses.”
 
Click here to get a full copy of Barracuda’s “The State of Network Security in 2021.” To get a full copy of its “The State of Office 365 Backup,” click study.

Visit the SASE product page and the Data Inspector product page for more information about Barracuda’s cloud-based SASE platform and its Data Inspector solution, respectively. 

To know more about the Barracuda Secured.21 Customer Conference, visit this link.