Corporate AV options

[Antimony]

Based off the AV guide stickied at the top I looked up the Kaspersky AV Business Optimal. Has anyone used it? Is their coporate edition worth it?

We need about a 25 user liscence. Most of the computers are on a simple network behind a Sonicwall router. Around 8 are either laptops or are desktops at remote locations. We had been happy with Symantec products until recently.

We purchased Symantec AV two years ago with version 8.1 and partially made the upgrade to 9 last year (We ran into many problems with the live updater in SAV 9, so many of the computers are still running 8.1). Now the time for renewal is here. Symantec wants to sell me version 10 or Symantec Client Security 3. While I've had trouble finding reviews of SAV, the user reviews that I've found about the latest versions of NAV are less than steller.

Is SAV 10 stable, realitvly bug free, and worth the price for a 25 user liscence? Or is there a better small business AV package than Symantec Anti-Virus (Kaspersky or something else)? Thanks for the help.

 

[Antimony]

I'll take that as a no.

Does anyone know where I might find out the stats for the corporate editons, and their reviews? All that I've really been able to find are reviews of to personal editions. Thank you.

 

[MrChad]

Well, I can't speak for Kaspersky, but I've had great success with Symantec's Corporate products. Very stable and unintrusive. I wouldn't judge a corporate antivirus product on reviews for its consumer-level brother.

 

[mechBgon]

I haven't tried Kaspersky's or Symantec's corporate products, but we use McAfee's Active VirusScan suite where I work and it's another one you could check out. If you enable all the protective options (compressed-file scanning, heuristics, adware, spyware, potentially-unwanted program detection, etc), it will cause a noticable performance hit, but it's as reliable as pie. The central-management part of the suite is pretty good IMHO (ePolicy Orchestrator 3.5, not the wannabe ProtectionPilot).

If you don't mind some configuration-panel overload, here's a rundown of what VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i has in the way of options and stuff: http://www.omnicast.net/vse8/index.html You can build a pre-configured stand-alone installer so you only have to go through that stuff once, or you can use ePO to do it centrally for any systems that are able to hit your ePO server.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I haven't tried Kaspersky's or Symantec's corporate products, but we use McAfee's Active VirusScan suite where I work and it's another one you could check out. If you enable all the protective options (compressed-file scanning, heuristics, adware, spyware, potentially-unwanted program detection, etc), it will cause a noticable performance hit, but it's as reliable as pie. The central-management part of the suite is pretty good IMHO (ePolicy Orchestrator 3.5, not the wannabe ProtectionPilot).

If you don't mind some configuration-panel overload, here's a rundown of what VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i has in the way of options and stuff: http://www.omnicast.net/vse8/index.html You can build a pre-configured stand-alone installer so you only have to go through that stuff once, or you can use ePO to do it centrally for any systems that are able to hit your ePO server.

as always, I must chime in for VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i. I support it at work for a university with over 40,000+ eligible users, with a good many offices using EPO.

the last positive experience i've had was watching its buffer overflow protection stopping MS05-039 dead in its tracks, even without updated definitions.

I've heard EPO isn't the easiest to manage, but VirusScan itself is a solid product in my opinion.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I haven't tried Kaspersky's or Symantec's corporate products, but we use McAfee's Active VirusScan suite where I work and it's another one you could check out. If you enable all the protective options (compressed-file scanning, heuristics, adware, spyware, potentially-unwanted program detection, etc), it will cause a noticable performance hit, but it's as reliable as pie. The central-management part of the suite is pretty good IMHO (ePolicy Orchestrator 3.5, not the wannabe ProtectionPilot).

If you don't mind some configuration-panel overload, here's a rundown of what VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i has in the way of options and stuff: http://www.omnicast.net/vse8/index.html You can build a pre-configured stand-alone installer so you only have to go through that stuff once, or you can use ePO to do it centrally for any systems that are able to hit your ePO server.

Ugh, our client uses VirusScan Enterprise and while it may be reliable, I've seen the "noticeable performance hit" you mention cripple systems with 100 percent CPU usage.

 

[ScoobMaster]

K-12 school district network admin checking in here. We use the Computer Associates E-Trust Corporate Antivirus (and PestPatrol Anti-Spam bundle) and have been *very* happy with it so far. I'm not sure how it stacks up on a price comparison, but we were able to negotiate a pretty sweet deal on a "price-per-seat" for all our desktops (most likely because we are a school and have that "educational pricing" thing working for us!) I will say that it has been reliable, easy to deploy and update, AND unobtrusive.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I haven't tried Kaspersky's or Symantec's corporate products, but we use McAfee's Active VirusScan suite where I work and it's another one you could check out. If you enable all the protective options (compressed-file scanning, heuristics, adware, spyware, potentially-unwanted program detection, etc), it will cause a noticable performance hit, but it's as reliable as pie. The central-management part of the suite is pretty good IMHO (ePolicy Orchestrator 3.5, not the wannabe ProtectionPilot).

If you don't mind some configuration-panel overload, here's a rundown of what VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i has in the way of options and stuff: http://www.omnicast.net/vse8/index.html You can build a pre-configured stand-alone installer so you only have to go through that stuff once, or you can use ePO to do it centrally for any systems that are able to hit your ePO server.

Ugh, our client uses VirusScan Enterprise and while it may be reliable, I've seen the "noticeable performance hit" you mention cripple systems with 100 percent CPU usage.

Me too. It is particularly vigorous about prosecuting .CHM files and .JAR files if it's allowed to spend lots of time processing archives. An example is launching Help from within Microsoft Access 2000. VirusScan will hit the default 45-second timeout limit before it's done processing the whateverit'snamed.CHM file, even on a very powerful desktop system. But I can change that timeout limit any time I feel like, just fire up ePO console and click a few things.

 

[redbeard1]

Norton 8 to 9 upgrade was buggy. It was common to have issues with Outlook on the workstations doing the Norton install as an upgrade. A full uninstall and reinstall seemed to work better. Corporate 9 to 10 has been pretty painless for me. I've done over a half dozen Version 9 to 10 upgrades on servers, and their workstations, and the only complaint I have, is you have to uninstall the Symantec System Center from the server first, which requires a reboot, then install the anti virus upgrade, which does not need a reboot, and then reinstall the System Center which requires another reboot. Clients get all grumpy when you have to reboot servers.

I have not done an upgrade from 8 to 10 however, so I can't speak to that process.

From the workstation perspective, 10 is much better about catching spyware. 10 also is not supported for Win98.

 

[Antimony]

Thank you for the help. These are just the sort of answers that I was looking for. =)

 

[screw3d]

My school provides Symantec Antivirus Corporate.. works pretty damn well for thousands of users to far!

 

[iroast]

my org uses etrust antivirus. shrug.