Corporate AV recommendations needed thanks

Hello there.

I have been asked (by a good friend) to recommend a corporate AV for a small LAN of 1 server and 20 PCs. The blade server in question is running Win Server 2008 and clients are predominantly W7, but there are some XP machines on it as well. The users themselves are complete noobs, so the Av should be as much remote oriented as possible and should require minimum (or preferably no) user interaction. Also, false-positives are not very welcome as, I'm guessing here, they could invoke unnecessary panic among inexperienced users.

Now, I've been looking at McAfee and Symantec, but then decided to ask here as I'm not exactly up-to-date with the personal AVs market, let alone corporate.
Which ones offer good balance between usual features - remote options, support, overhead, detection, FPs, XP/W7 compatibility, etc?

Thank you for any possible input.

Cheers,

 

Stay far away from McAfee. Our company has to deal with that piece of crap software.

 

same more or less. whoever gives you better deal of the 2

 

Well, my former employer used it, that's why I heard of it, LOL.
But why do you say that? Is it bad coding or bad efficiency or what?

 

You sayin' there are no alternatives?

 

Symantec Endpoint, Trend Micro Business Security, Kaspersky Business Security, Eset Business Edition, Microsoft Forefront...some of the better ones.

Business versions of AV products usually have a central management console, where you push deploy the client packages..which you've created custom configurations for (exclusions, settings, etc). The PC that runs the management part pulls down the daily updates, and the client PCs pull their updates from that..across the LAN. So your internet connection gets less traffic..instead of a download for each PC. And you can monitor the clients from this management console, as well as do program updates, configuration changes, etc.

 

A vs. B is against the forum rules.

 

You mentioned those 2 so I thought narrowed your search already. But of the others mentioned elsewhere in this thread, to me at least, the same rule applies. Whoever gives you better deal.

 

I'm not asking A vs. B question. I'm asking for AV recommendations as I never dealt with corporate AVs and have no clue what to recommend. I just mentioned a couple of AVs I could think of atm.
If anyone wants to derail this thread, I think I'll manage reading between the lines.

Thanks YeOlde, I was kinda aiming at you.
I did not know MS has a solution. Need to take a look at that.

Oh, I see. Well, I don't mind delving in this topic and trying out a few AVs here at home. I just needed a little push in the right direction. Thanks.

 

Hi,

Finding an optimal security system(software) is one of the foremost important tasks for IT brains on staff. Each company has very different setups for the framework.

By the same token, most, if not all, commercial security software vendors DO have better than average applications available.

If your company can not locate a workable/trouble free software application after a while, then it is the time to roll the brains(heads)---this is what has transpired in the company that I am associated with.

 

I went with Vipre in our office. It will run on servers as well as workstations and the pricing is good. Been running it for a few months without issues.

 

If I were personally running IT support for a company I would chose Panda or Sunbelt (Vipre) for all machines.

 

I would take a hard look here

 

AV-Comparatives has a review of corporate security products.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/corporate-reviews


Thanks.

 

My company uses it too (McAfee Enterprise v8.7i) and it's slow as molasses.

 

That's the same one we use with the McAfee agent communicating with the EPO server. Its slow, bad efficiency, bad everything. It doesn't always install correctly you have to do some crazy procedures, lets through malware like its not even there, and slows down a machines performance. I feel bad for anyone who has to deal with this crap. The EPO has so many things going on as far as features it feels like a big mess. Stay far away.

 

tho symantec has issues one thing is for sure it is stable and has good support and a support forum.

 

My place of employment uses Symantec endpoint security and it's not been an enjoyable experience. I always loved how it will notify you it detected malware but is often unable to remove it. However, it did well in the avc corporate review/test. You might be able to use MSE for the workstations but I don't know about the server.

 

I am an McAfee administrator who is responsible for a network with over 7000 clients and several hundred servers. We are using VSE 8.5i and VSE 8.7i with Artemis technology enabled, and up to now we had no serious issues with McAfee products.

One on the reasons for this might be that we don´t have old clients in our network, since they are leased and exchanged every three years.

McAfee´s ePO server 4.5 is a great management solution in my opinion with a lot of stunning features. However, just as well as other products McAfee does have bugs and issues, but I don´t agree that McAfee is completely crap like some guys here said.

The best way to compare some solutions is imho to download the respective product evaluation versions and test them to get a feeling for the product. I never would only rely on what people say in internet forums...

 

We used to have Symantec Endpoint Protection 11, in our company. The only problem with that, was that the administrator module, on the server(s), were real sloooow. Nothing wrong with the protection, on both workstations and servers, it was only the administrator part, who was a pain in the butt, from time to time.
We now have Panda Managed Office Protection and that's a real winner. The administrator part is now "in a cloud" (so is part of the protection) and real easy to get to. Only a click away, from whatever computer, you're working on (got to have internet connection thou). A simple and effective "GUI" and it hasn't failed a single update, nor an upgrade to newer version, and yes it does that all by itself. That is IMHO SUPER cool If you want to know more, you should check out this site http://www.pandasecurity.com/denmark/enterprise/solutions/managedprotection/
You wont be disappointed. Being the administrator of your company's AV solution, have NEVER been easier


Cheers

 

I recommend Sophos. Its a well rounded and mature product for enterprise deployment.

 

MSE is only licensed for home/home office use (as are the other free AV programs), it would violate the license to use it in a business/corporate environment. For that environment, if you wanted to use Microsofts AV, you'd use Microsoft Forefront.

 

I've always recommended a multi-engine AV for gateway such as Forefront or McAfee. I couldn't recommend a singular engine AV for a gateway. Client side is different though.

 

My mistake. I thought it was legal for commercial use like Comodo.

 

I recently went through looking at antivirus for our LAN which is around 500 PC's.

I settled on Avira Antivir managed through their SMC admin console.

I'd say it meets most of your criteria. There has been a few false positives, but it doesn't seem to miss much which is of course the purpose of an Antivirus package.

Tthe management console is pretty simple/easy to use too.