Your Views on virus software

[McQueen]

Hello experts I’m looking for a bit of advise about anti virus software, we currently have 6 Solaris boxes and around 40 windows servers, all the windows servers are running sophos anti virus but no virus software on the sun boxes in your opinion should I be running sophos on the sun boxes?.

 

[Annihilannic]

I personally would not bother with AV software on Linux/Unix. Others may disagree!

Annihilannic.

 

[McQueen]

Thanks Annihilannic does anyone else have a opinion?.

 

[linnorm]

I'm with Annihilannic, it's more important to have your security patches up to date than have AV.

 

[Mike042]

I agree as well. Though if you are sharing files with Windows systems (using Samba or its equivalent) then I might be tempted to virus check those filesystems.

Additionally a while ago (though not wanting to cast aspersions or discredit products), when we were checking Windows systems for viruses using 3 different virus checkers, we found that the AV offering from Sophos (at the time) failed to report viruses that others found.

I hope that helps.

Mike

 

[SamBones]

The approach to system security for *nix is very different from Windows. I've never seen a need to install antivirus software on a *nix box. It is very important to make sure you keep them patched and watch for news of any vulnerabilities. You should also find a good "hardening" document. A Google for "solaris hardening" should get you quite a few. I believe there are a couple here on Tek-Tips too.

 

[mbrooks]

I use ClamAV on several FreeBSD/Linux mail servers. Works great!
Been using it for the last 4 years and haven't had any issues.

http://clamav.net

M. Brooks

http://mbrooks.info

 

[mbrooks]

Note: I use AV only for scanning incoming/outgoing mail. Besides that it's completely useless on *nix.

M. Brooks

http://mbrooks.info