Small Business AV solutions.

gmaster456

Golden Member
Sep 7, 2011
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I'm looking for a server based antivirus solution that monitors the server and client PC's with a central management console on the server. Any suggestions?
 

Demo24

Diamond Member
Aug 5, 2004
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I use trend micro wfbs( worry free business standard) which does exactly that. I have not seen a single problem on our network since implementing it. I don't know if other products are necessarily better, but we have been very happy with trend since going with it.

Trend offers a variety of products largely depending on size of network and also how many features you want. I had originally wanted to go with officescan, but it didn't come through and ended up with wfbs. Not complaining as it does all we really need.
 

Funnyvibe

Junior Member
Feb 13, 2013
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I have many happy clients using ESET. Very easy to manage and relatively inexpensive. Doesn't get in the way really except to stop employees from downloading something stupid. =)
 

gmaster456

Golden Member
Sep 7, 2011
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I've been looking at Trend Micro WFBS very closely. It looks like what we need. I'll have to take a look at ESET too.
 

compman25

Diamond Member
Jan 12, 2006
3,767
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81
We use the Worry Free Business Security Services version. You said you wanted a server based solution, this is a cloud based solution in case that matters. We have been really happy with it.
 

Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
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I've been looking at Trend Micro WFBS very closely. It looks like what we need. I'll have to take a look at ESET too.

I looked at both when deciding on a new vendor. This was over a year ago so bear with me:
-ESET ran better on some of the ancient computer systems we had laying around
-ESET also came with a mechanism to push software installations. Didn't play around with it so I don't know how easy it is to use but that was a big consideration in my book as there are only 2 IT people in the company for about 200 computers

-TM Cost much less. Like 25% less from the quotes we got. So I had to go with TM :p There was nothing really wrong with TM just that ESET had some extra bells and whistles I really wanted to play with and use

So - after 1.25 years with TM I am definitely happy with it. There was a brief period just after installing it that there was a rash of 2012 Internet Security viruses that got in but other than that its pretty much been issue free. (It prevented it from modifying local GP and kept the infection to just that local user)

TM comes with the ability to uninstall most old AV products on a computer you push it to. I did find that it often had problems with Kaspersky though. I don't know if thats a TM or KAV problem considering several needed the actual KAV uninstall utility as even the uninstaller in add/remove programs failed.

I will say that TM is incredibly fast to install when pushing an installation. I want to say that it took about 1 minute for each. You can also setup a webpage for people to go to install. I will note that I ran into issues doing this with our IE security settings so I utilized their installer builder utility.

If you have a remote office its also very easy to setup a remote update server that they can pull updates from locally. You can then have that single remote server pull from a master update server or from TM directly
 
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Demo24

Diamond Member
Aug 5, 2004
8,356
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If you have a remote office its also very easy to setup a remote update server that they can pull updates from locally. You can then have that single remote server pull from a master update server or from TM directly


I had trouble getting that to work. We are fine 90% of the time using our hub location as the main update source as the general update files are quite small. However when I went from v7 to v8, totally knocked my network out as it tried to push out that client update (still cant figure out how big it was, my guess around 70mb) to 250+ comps at once. Ended up having to pull plugs and do special routing to cut back on the load, which messed up some and they are stuck on v7 meaning we've got to go around and manually update them. :\
 

Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
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I had trouble getting that to work. We are fine 90% of the time using our hub location as the main update source as the general update files are quite small. However when I went from v7 to v8, totally knocked my network out as it tried to push out that client update (still cant figure out how big it was, my guess around 70mb) to 250+ comps at once. Ended up having to pull plugs and do special routing to cut back on the load, which messed up some and they are stuck on v7 meaning we've got to go around and manually update them. :\

Interesting. Was that internally or to a remote site? If it was a remote site I am pretty sure you can setup as many TM servers as you want within your licensing numbers. My thinking would be to setup a remote server - use their migration tool to migrate all the computers to the remote site - update from there and then move them back. I did something similar initially when I installed TM at our remote site because I didn't want to have to push the install across our already overworked site to site VPN

Might be a moot point now though. I just looked and there seems to be a decent amount of control over automatic and manual updating
 

Demo24

Diamond Member
Aug 5, 2004
8,356
9
81
Interesting. Was that internally or to a remote site? If it was a remote site I am pretty sure you can setup as many TM servers as you want within your licensing numbers. My thinking would be to setup a remote server - use their migration tool to migrate all the computers to the remote site - update from there and then move them back. I did something similar initially when I installed TM at our remote site because I didn't want to have to push the install across our already overworked site to site VPN

Might be a moot point now though. I just looked and there seems to be a decent amount of control over automatic and manual updating

99% of my comps are remote, so totally whacked my upload. I didn't try to setup new TM servers, just set some existing machines up as update agents. I have adjusted my biggest site to do this, not really sure if its working or not. Planning on putting several more servers out in the field, probably work on getting the update scheme to work properly then, or find a way for management to give me a synchronized fiber connection.:p