AV Recommendation

[itaviator]

Looking for a corporate solution for Anti-virus and I'm hoping to get some recommendations.

Let me start off by saying no to Norton and McAfee - bloated resource hogs. I'm currently using a trial of F-Prot (which is working very good and it's incredibly cheap) and I've also tried the trial for Kaspersky (also worked good but about 4 times more expensive than F-Prot). Have used AVG in the past at home, so I'm familiar with them also. And there price is cheap also.

Remember, I'm looking for a corporate solution. Something that I can centrally manage from a server and then have all other workstations/servers update from the main.

Currently leaning towards F-Prot and would like to know if anyone has comments on it or anything else out there.

Thanks!

Systems Administrator

 

[Scotsdude]

Check out Sophos. Made purely for the corporate domain, its reasonably priced, very effective and VERY easy to administer from a central server.

------------------------------------------------------
Matt
Life is all shadows and dust.
Live it up with women and wine while you can

 

[Infinity306]

I know you said no to Norton, and I agree for Home Use.. but the Symantec Corporate Antivirus is actually not too bad.. use it here, no complaints and have noticed no slowness(well once I turned off checking network folders for client computers...Have been using Symantec here for around 5 years..Trend Micro seems to have a good corporate edition as well, I have looked at the trial version and tried it out..Plus for it is that it has web-based Management console instead of MMC based management

 

[electronicsfreak]

F-prot is good but it has flaws in it and leaves things behind at times. Id reccomend for corporate, trend micro, sophos or nod32.

There is a point in wisdom and knowledge that when you reach it, you exceed what is considered possible - Jason Schoon

 

[electronicsfreak]

I also must add Ive never worked in the corporate part so the antiviruses ive used have been for home. Symantec I really dislike for many reasons. One , the home antivirus they have in my opinion is the absolute worst. Second , their tech support seems to enjoy ignoring me. Sent them 4 emails, never got a single response back.

Like I said though I can not comment on how they are corporate as I have never used them for that purpose. My favorite antivirus that I use is antivir however I do not believe they make a version for corporate.

http://www.free-av.com

There is a point in wisdom and knowledge that when you reach it, you exceed what is considered possible - Jason Schoon

 

[kestrel1]

You could have a look at ClamAV:

http://www.clamwin.com

Windows version

http://www.clamav.net

Unix/Linux version
Totally free (open source)& works very well. Can be set to email when a virus is detected on any machine.
Only thing I have found a pain is that the actual program does not get updated automatically at present, so you have to download the program updates yourself. The definition files update automatically without a problem. I suspect this will be sorted in future releases.

 

[BadBigBen]

My favorite antivirus that I use is antivir however I do not believe they make a version for corporate.

Wrong there E-Freak... check out:

http://www.avira.com/en/pages/index.php

look at it's Solution and Products links...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[electronicsfreak]

Ah well I was not sure, thats why I posted the link just in case.

There is a point in wisdom and knowledge that when you reach it, you exceed what is considered possible - Jason Schoon

 

[jdeane]

Take a look at Eset's NOD32 Enterprise edition. I've used Sysmantec, Sophos in the past and have found NOD32 to much better.

Jon

 

[itaviator]

Kestrel1: I've used clamwin in the past and I do like it. The only downfall is that there is no "real-time" protection and as far as I know, there is no central management for a network environment. But just without the "real-time" scanning, there is no way I would use it here. Users never remember to manually scan before using a cd and/or usb, etc.

freak: what kind of flaws are you talking about in f-prot? So far in testing I haven't seen any.

Systems Administrator

 

[electronicsfreak]

Well ive seen it miss several trojans in the past that ewido picked up. Around 7 at one time.

There is a point in wisdom and knowledge that when you reach it, you exceed what is considered possible - Jason Schoon

 

[itaviator]

Well, did the trojans just come out? Or we're they out for months?

If you look at any AV comparison charts, there's not a single vendor that pick's up 100% of virus/malware 100% of the time.

There's always a chance that something could slip in since the vendor hasn't updated their definitions yet. You're at the mercy of how fast the they update and how fast your system updates.

Systems Administrator

 

[electronicsfreak]

Yeah I know that but that was the problem I had with it. It was becoming a bit slow on catching new trojans. Yes I realize no program will catch everything however ewido seemed to be on the ball faster at the time then F-prot.

There is a point in wisdom and knowledge that when you reach it, you exceed what is considered possible - Jason Schoon

 

[kestrel1]

itaviator: Yes, I know about no real time scan, but never found it a problem here. Servers are set to run a scan every night & if anything is found it is deleted & I get an email report about it. Maybe it will be introduced in a future release, I need to see what they have planned on that one though.

 

[kestrel1]

For your info, at the Clamwin project they are working on the real time on-access scanner & it looks like they hope to get this sorted fairly soon.

 

[itaviator]

kestrel1: the real-time scanner has been on their FAQ for about a year now that they are working on it. Until then, I wouldn't put it in a corporate environment. It's good that you scan your servers every night, but what happens when a user brings in a CD (they thought it was a vender manual for example) at 9:00am and they try to read it (forgetting to manually scan it). A virus is unleashed and you wouldn't have any idea until your scan runs 10-12 hours later. By then, you could be costing your company millions.

Systems Administrator

 

[kestrel1]

That is a possibility, but users are unable to use CD's as we are on a thin client network. They can use USB pen drives, but the profiles do not allow exe's & other types of file to be run on the clients. Everything is run from the application servers. If one server was infected, it can be taken off line & sorted out. The other servers would be able to cope. Any files are centrally stored (file server)
Luckily it wouldn't cost the company millions, as this is a school environment. I do have PC's connected to the network, but these are locked down. You know what kids are like for fiddling!!
I totally understand what you mean about a large corporate company not using this type of software until they get the real-time scanner sorted out etc. but for us little guys it is fine. I have been using it now for about three years & been lucky enough not to have suffered one virus infection, although a fair few have been caught in the nightly scans.
When I first started doing this current job (7 years ago) they only had virus protection on the file server. The application servers had no protection. No surprise then that they got infected with the blaster worm. I managed to get rid of this infection & they gave me some money to put some AV software on. I didn't have much clout at that time otherwise the AV software would have been installed sooner. Anyway, we tried a few solutions, but our external network support team (who are excellent) suggested that we tried Clamwin. All I can say is that for us, it has worked a treat, but would be better with the real-time scan. (one day)
Obviously if you are on a large corporate network then you would require this protection now & not later, but for our situation it saves us a fair bit of money that can be spent on improving the network for the kids education. Bonus.

 

[mofusjtf]

What about Trend Micro? I've used their products for corporate a lot and the management is great. It runs on IIS or Apache and can be managed from anywhere you are in or outside the organization via the web. The price is comparable to most. They offer a variety of different products for corporate.