Virus Prevention in the Small/Medium Business?

Morti asks: "I've been asked to select a virus scanner to be installed on the network at work. It's only a small office with six Windows XP PCs, two Linux servers and any number of Windows XP laptops that random people bring in. And I'm wondering, not just in this case but generally, what is the virus scanning / Internet security solution of choice for the small business these days? Costs need to be kept at a minimum, particularly because this business is a registered charity (a church, no less). We used to have Norton Internet Security but I'm not really keen to keep it. Besides Linux (which I've been pushing but nobody's interested), what is the most cost-effective and generally 'best' virus prevention and Internet security solution for the small/medium business?"

Comments

Re:AVG free

[arkanes]

*NOT* free for commercial use. This is important.

Re:One word:

[saintp]

Oy! I understand that /.ers might not always RTFA, but can't you at least read the goddamn summary? It's a friggin' paragraph, it's not like you need to be in Mensa to understand it.

Re:Of course no one's interested in Linux...

[Wylfing]

Funny, yes, but also a little insightful in a backhanded way. (Is that even a compliment anymore?) As someone who has been near to various charity/nonprofit organizations, it always saddens me to see them squander their donors' money on Windows and Office licenses.

I'll get on a slight rant: I've said as much to nonprofits as well as my city government. Why do you need to buy Windows and Office? Oh, they say, we need to remain compatible with everyone else. OK, I reply, what kinds of document exchange do you do? Well, they say, looking at each other, we print things out on letterhead.

So yeah, squandering is what you're doing.

Firewall, firewall, firewall

[bjprice]

Your primary danger is the laptop users. A laptop will get infected at home, the luser will bring it in and jack into your network, and the infected laptop will infect all the other windows hosts if you haven't been regularly patching them, or at least some other laptops (which were out of the office when you applied the latest patch)...

Ideally make windows clients perform a virus definitions update and then a virus scan as part of your Windows domain logon script. Make them install any outstanding Microsoft patches on logon too. Anything not on the domain doesn't get access to anything.

Keep laptops on an entirely separate subnet from your permanently resident machines and firewall all traffic between the two, whitelisting only the ports/protocols you absolutely need.

Then it goes without saying that you need active firewalling on the main internet gateway/router, email scanning/cleansing software on the mail server, and anti-spyware, anti-virus and maybe personal firewall software on each individual machine, as a start. Block dangerous filetypes at the web proxy. Disable any and all unnecessary Windows services, and don't let your users run with as administrators. Disable IE (don't just remove the icon - actually block it at the firewall) and Outlook (Express), install Firefox and Thunderbird or similar and keep them fully patched too.

All of the above won't guarantee the safety of your network, but it'll help. Remember that your lusers will actively attempt to circumvent all of your security policies however they can, and that they're all pathological liars.

As for what specific software you should use, I'd lean heavily towards Linux on all servers/routers, but can't help you on the Windows stuff. The last virus I got on an Amstrad 386 running DOS. I've been careful since then, but your users won't be - because they simply don't care.