Opinions? Which Corporate Anti-Virus?

[WAP]

Looking at the two biggies (Symantec/Norton and McAffee), I feel a
certain distrust. Maybe it's the recent debacles surrounding both of
them. Maybe it's that McAffee has always screwed up whatever computer I
install their stuff on. Maybe it's the way Symantec Anti-Virus corporate
10.0 caused blue-screen-of-death crashes on my Windows Server 2003 box.

Anyways, I'm now looking for a recommendation OTHER than those two.

So far, I've looked at Sophos, Kaspersky, etc. I would like:

1. a nice centralized server admin tool, so updates download once from
the internet and are dispersed to the clients.
2. the frigging background scans should be strictly limited
to off-business-hours, I hate that stupid rtvscan.exe taking up all
my CPU cycles, and thrashing my disk, at whatever time it feels like
doing so, thank you very much Symantec.
3. the users should not be adversely affected by being infected
by this anti-virus software. That is to say, the innoculation should
not produce worse symptoms than the the disease we're innoculating against.
4. incoming and outgoing EMAIL on the user's client-of-choice should be
protected (presumably by some kind of SMTP and POP3 transparent proxy)

Regards,

WP.
Toronto Canada

 

[Frankster]

One word...

Trend Micro Officscan Corporate Edition (okay 4 words).

http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/desktop/osce/evaluate/overview.htm

Absolutely has everything you want. Hands off admin - load it and forget it.
Fantastic web based admin console. Remote admin, etc.

Just one note... personally, I don't run the Email scanning crap. Waste of
time and resources as far as I'm concerned. But Officescan has it if you
want to run it.

-Frank

 

[Ed]

So far, I've looked at Sophos, Kaspersky, etc. I would like:

Bit of a long post, however...

I have just moved from Sophos to NOD32, my main driver was cost, so I
tried AVG and NOD32.

NOD32's Remote Administration Console GUI is lacking in some areas,
like grouping clients and showing columns etc. It feels amateurish
compared to Sophos SAV Admin and some things could do with being more
sensibly arranged.

Don't be put off though, the RA Console is powerful, fast and
lightweight compared to SAV Admin. It only takes a few minutes to
install and is well worth a day of your time to trial and play around
with.

Having used Sophos for many years it took me some time to work out the
RA Console way of doing things, but now I am happily installing NOD32
remotely, or by email, CD, USB Pens, etc. Support have been able to
answer my questions during and after the trial.

Bear in mind that I haven't used it for long but, like the console, the
NOD32 client doesn't appear to be as resource hungry as Sophos. So far
I've remotely installed NOD32 onto XP machines, Win2000 Servers,
Win2003 Servers and a Win2000 Adv Server cluster, no problems.

The bottom line is, had Sophos been the same cost as NOD32 then I would
have stayed with Sophos to save the hassle of swapping 200 machines.
But now I am on with the project, I am glad that I swapped.

Hope that helps.

 

[Ian Kenefick]

Looking at the two biggies (Symantec/Norton and McAffee), I feel a
certain distrust. Maybe it's the recent debacles surrounding both of
them. Maybe it's that McAffee has always screwed up whatever computer I
install their stuff on. Maybe it's the way Symantec Anti-Virus corporate
10.0 caused blue-screen-of-death crashes on my Windows Server 2003 box.

Anyways, I'm now looking for a recommendation OTHER than those two.

So far, I've looked at Sophos, Kaspersky, etc. I would like:

1. a nice centralized server admin tool, so updates download once from
the internet and are dispersed to the clients.
2. the frigging background scans should be strictly limited
to off-business-hours, I hate that stupid rtvscan.exe taking up all
my CPU cycles, and thrashing my disk, at whatever time it feels like
doing so, thank you very much Symantec.
3. the users should not be adversely affected by being infected
by this anti-virus software. That is to say, the innoculation should
not produce worse symptoms than the the disease we're innoculating against.
4. incoming and outgoing EMAIL on the user's client-of-choice should be
protected (presumably by some kind of SMTP and POP3 transparent proxy)

NOD32 fulfills your requirements here - www.nod32.com