Barracuda Launches Security Suite for Office 365

If you’re worried about how secure your Microsoft Office 365 deployment is, Barracuda Networks (CUDA) might have a solution for you.

The network security provider recently announced the launch of Barracuda Essentials, a cloud services suite for Office 365 that contains three of the company’s enterprise security solutions.

While Office 365 already comes equipped with its own assortment of security solutions to protect enterprise assets, Barracuda essentials acts as an add-on product, and is designed to be attractive to those who are particularly security-conscious, according to the company. The suite includes Barracuda Email Security Service, Barracuda Cloud Archiving Service and Barracuda Cloud Backup.

As their names imply, each of the three solutions within Barracuda Essentials focuses on a different area of network security. Straight from the press release, the solutions feature:

“Microsoft and Barracuda have worked closely together for a number of years in helping customers simplify and secure cloud migrations, particularly in the case of Office 365 and Azure,” said Michael Hughes, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales at Barracuda, in a statement. “Barracuda Essentials for Office 365 is the culmination of our rich experience and expertise in protecting Microsoft environments and aims to help customers transition to Office 365 as seamless as possible.”

The addition of Barracuda essentials continues the company’s mission of helping legacy customers to transition their enterprise email servers to the cloud, Hughes said.

A recent study commissioned by Barracuda found that 72 percent of respondents reported concerns about, or have not considered, the effectiveness of the current Office 365 security, compliance and backup features in regard to their organization’s needs. While its important to take a study like this with a grain of salt, cloud security is certainly high-priority issue among both born-in-the-cloud companies and those who are in the process of switching over from legacy solutions.

Barracuda is selling its software as a service package on a per-user licensing model, with individual licenses available for $5.00 per user, per month, according to the announcement. A basic version of Barracuda Essentials is also available for $3.50 per user, per month, but does not include any of the cloud backup services included with the premium edition.

Barracuda launched the early access version of Barracuda Cloud Archiving Service in December as part of the company’s new Microsoft Office 365 Strategic Initiative.