Barracuda Networks

Barracuda Networks was founded in 2003 by CEO Dean Drako, Michael Perone, and Zach Levow, and the company introduced the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall in the same year. In January 2006, it closed its first outside investment of $40 million from Sequoia Capital and Francisco Partners. In 2007, the company moved its headquarters to Campbell, California, and opened an office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Barracuda Networks expanded its research and development facility in Ann Arbor to a 12,500 square foot office building on Depot Street in 2008. By 2012, the Michigan-based research division had grown to about 180 employees, again outgrowing its space. In June 2012, Barracuda signed a lease to occupy the 45,000 square foot office complex previously used as the Borders headquarters on Maynard St in downtown Ann Arbor.

On January 29, 2008, Barracuda Networks was sued by Trend Micro over its use of the open source anti-virus software Clam AntiVirus, which Trend Micro claimed to be in violation of its patent on 'anti-virus detection on an SMTP or FTP gateway'. In addition to providing samples of prior art in an effort to render Trend Micro's patent invalid, in July 2008 Barracuda launched a countersuit against Trend Micro claiming Trend Micro violated several antivirus patents Barracuda Networks had acquired from IBM.

In 2012, the company became a co-sponsor of the Garmin-Barracuda UCI ProTour cycling team.

In January 2013, a backdoor was discovered: "A variety of firewall, VPN, and spam filtering gear sold by Barracuda Networks contains undocumented backdoor accounts that allow people to remotely log in and access sensitive information, researchers with an Austrian security firm have warned."

In November 2013, Barracuda Networks went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CUDA.

In November 2017, private equity firm Thoma Bravo announced it was taking Barracuda Networks private in a $1.6 billion buyout. In February 2018 Thoma Bravo completed the acquisition. In April 2022, KKR announced the signing of an agreement to purchase Barracuda Networks from Thoma Bravo for about $4 billion, which was completed in August of that year.

Releases

In December 2008, the company launched the BRBL (Barracuda Reputation Block List), its proprietary and dynamic list of known spam servers, for free and public use in blocking spam at the gateway.

In September 2007, Barracuda Networks acquired NetContinuum, which provides application controllers to secure and manage enterprise web applications.

In November 2008, Barracuda Networks acquired BitLeap and 3SP.

In January 2009, Barracuda Networks acquired Yosemite Technologies to add software agents for incremental backups of applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server, and Windows system states.

In September 2009, Barracuda Networks acquired controlling interest in phion AG, an Austria-based public company delivering enterprise-class firewalls. A month later, in October, the company acquired Purewire Inc, a software as a service (SaaS) company offering cloud-based web filtering and security.