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Alternative Enterprise Anti-Virus Solutions?
Darth_brooks asks: "I admin for a great non-profit organization that has spent the last year rebuilding after a massive fire. We've got a pretty tight system running now, especially compared to the unmanaged chaos that existed before the fire. Firefox for surfing and T-bird for for e-mail, WSUS for updates, and we're slowly replacing Office with OpenOffice. But out anti-virus solution (command AV, a holdover from our old system) is not cutting the mustard. Specifically the management console isn't exactly reliable, and we just don't feel like we're getting our money's worth. What alternatives can the Slashdot crowd suggest?"
"The two obvious names that come to mind are Norton and Mcafee. Since all of our machines are donated, we really don't have the resources for Norton (who does?) and Mcafee's just been dealt a black eye. In addition, we're on a limited budget. Our machines are mostly P2 & P3's, and we're an XP / Active Directory shop with some scattered Fedora & BSD boxes scattered about for non-desktop tasks.
The biggest features we're looking for are the ability to centrally manage updates (which rules of AVG's free edition), and a reasonable price tag for licenses for 50-60 machines. Our current solution is only in place because we signed a long term licensing agreement, and I don't want to see us get into another deal for a product that doesn't turn out to be as god as advertised. I'd also like to hear some of the Horror / Success stories from users."
The biggest features we're looking for are the ability to centrally manage updates (which rules of AVG's free edition), and a reasonable price tag for licenses for 50-60 machines. Our current solution is only in place because we signed a long term licensing agreement, and I don't want to see us get into another deal for a product that doesn't turn out to be as god as advertised. I'd also like to hear some of the Horror / Success stories from users."
http://www.nod32.com.sg/home/home.php
techsoup.org - donated and discount technology equipment products. We support a local Boys and Girls Club, and they got their software through there.
Good luck!
I would highly recomend checking out Clam AV.
It comes in both *nix and Windows varients and works pretty well for system scanning. It also works very well in a mail server tool-chain.
MTW
Two year licenses are incredibly useful and their software doesnt suck like Norton.
AVG takes the approach of just working behind the scenes and doing it well...Norton takes the approach of "I need to constantly justify my existance by letting the user know I am doing...something"
AVG works great, so go with it. Their support is pretty good too from the couple of times when I needed to contact them.
It sounds like you pretty much said AVG is good and reasonable so just go with it.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
F-prot from Frisk software. http://www.f-prot.com/
I just checked, and a 60 seat corporate license with full updates would run you $240 a year.
chown -R us.
actually, wouldn't the license agreement rule out AVG FREE edition in your situation?
however, they do have a fairly decent commercial product for the price. look at their network edition http://www.grisoft.com/doc/Networks/lng/us/tpl/tp
AVG has a enterprise version that's much cheaper than norton. You should check it out.
We just switched to it after battling the behemoths, and it's been a real boon to me. Management console works well, the product has been catching a ton of stuff that Symantec didn't, price was good, and it does a nice job of push installation (even here - we've got Samba domain controllers - it didn't care). I've had good experiences with their phone jockeys also. Downside - simple file sharing has to be turned off on winxp clients, but if you're on AD that's easy enough to fix.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Although it has great corporate management capabilities, like a centralized program/dictionary update server and permissions on settings (so end users can't stop/break it), it's better than your average ghoul at sucking the life out of your desktop computers.
I would invest in Sophos Antivirus. I am using it in our office and the program is great. Install the enterprise manager on the server and it will automatically download new versions when available and all the desktops will then download them from there.
Setup MailMonitor on a Linux box for incoming email scanning and you will end up with a solid AV solution.
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(^.^)
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*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
I know libraries can get a 30% discount, and when you renew you pay only 50% of the inital purchase, which lasts for 2 years instead of only 1. Considering AV is more important at the firewall and email filter than the desktop anyway, it's great to save on the desktop install price with AVG.
AVG Admin will save you time. If you use Windows Desktop Protection in the Shared Computer Toolkit, Grisoft will even send you the script for auto-updates when Windows Updates from your WSUS run.
AVG Free edition is ruled out by the licensing which doesn't cover non-home users pretty much. Even libraries are excluded from using it legally.
Oh You POS
winpooch? http://sourceforge.net/projects/winpooch/
I agree. I recommended AVG for years to my customers, but decided to give Avast! a try on a customer's infected PC after AVG. Avast! found a virus AVG didn't and uses 15%-20% less memory.
But I also recommend winpatrol. Not an AV program, it blocks out most malware, including some of the nastier stuff that can stealth-download itself into a Windows computer as long as the user is online. It only uses about 4 mb of memory to run in the background -- but I have no idea how much an enterprise solution would cost, as the regular version is free to home users. WinPatrol Plus costs $29.95 normally, so if there is no enterprise version, I guess it would depend on how many computers you need to isntall it on.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Regular users should not be able to install whatever software they want (what an admin nightmare for you otherwise! =), so maybe use a Squid proxy to block unwanted EXEs and the like (info here). I think there is an AV plugin for Squid too. Of course, there are Windows-based options like MIMESweeper for Web. Good luck!
I haven't seen any BitDefener recommendations yet. I will be considering it along with Kaspersky, F-Secure and NOD32.
6 3,pg,3,00.asp
BitDefender
http://www.bitdefender.com/
The New Virus Fighters: Our Antivirus Picks
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,1241
First and foremost, thanks for all of the responses! Lots of information and (so far) no suggestions that I just [freaking] google it. My faith in slashdot has been revived.
:). We concern ourselves with WW2 Aircraft, Radial engines, things of that nature. Technology didn't play a big role for the masses pre-fire. We wanted to change that, but never had a good starting point. When the rebuild started, we had to get the organization up and running in some capacity *YESTERDAY*. We had the proverbial chance to "strike while the iron was hot" and there wasn't time to hem and haw about the possiblity of mass migration. Right now, the machine that sees the most use by our least technical users (the Museum docents) is a Fedora Core box. The logic being that it would be the hardest for them to break. So far that has proven true. But our users that had experience had it using windows so, in order to aid in our evolution from "a couple machines here and there connected by coax (yes, coax. at the end of 2004.) with no real network connection" to "50-ish machines, ethernet, on a domain, network storage, off site backup, and an honest to god professional grade network that I would be proud to show off, and that moves this organization from 1993 to 2006 and beyond" we sacrificed and opted to stick with windows. Linux keeps coming up, but it's going to be a slow move.
Second: cripes, I've finally developed computer user grammer. It passes spell check but not basic grammar.
Third: some clarifications. The reason we keep AV running is that is because it's the right thing to do. Firefox, T-bird, and the firewall keep most of the bad stuff out. OpenOffice will cut down the risks even further, but we've still got a couple of points of entry to worry about. One is laptops. Even though no one has admin except those who need it (me and the other members of the tech. group), users can still install some simple programs. It's only a matter of time before somebody gets a network aware worm and brings the machine on site. Another point of entry is USB drives. We're pushing people towards those instead of floppies for the sake of relieability. In order to balence safety with usability, we add the layer of protection offered by AV.
In addition, WSUS isn't always on the ball. Occasionally you get a machine that quits grabbing updates, or one that never showed up in the first place. It's nice that I can keep those machines somewhat better protected with an additional program. On top of all that, we're an all volunteer group, so AV software gives us an addition layer of "false sense of security." I know that I can count on the firewall, the patch server, AND AV to buy me 48 to 72 hours of safety should the crap hit the fan like it did with Sasser or Blaster. Anti-virus, like any single layer of protection, isn't infallable, but it damn sure helps.
Linux: We're doing that in some areas, but the whole site isn't an option right now. Most of our users are technophobes, usually retirees. Actually, recovering technophobes now
Thanks again for the responses. I've gotten exactly what I wanted, solid reading material for a few days and some worthwhile points to ponder.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.