Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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
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