anti-virus for servers and clients

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gsb

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Hi

I wonder if anyone can give any suggestions. I’m looking for a new anti-virus for our business network client machines and file servers. Ideally something which is extremely effective, but not intrusive in terms of large update downloads and slowing down system performance.

So far I’m looking at:
Bitdefender Client Security
Kaspersky
Eset NOD32 Business Edition
G DATA
Avast
Avira AntiVir NetWork Bundle
AVG Network Edition

Anyone got any suggestions or experiences to help make the right selection?
 
As far as I know, RAU or Uj as it is now known, used Sophos (as did my ISP I worked at).

It was very effective.

It even has various types of server versions, such as mail server, proxy etc.

Of the ones you mentioned - I like NOD (ESET), so vote would go for that.

:)
 
Bitdefender sucks.... dont even bother with that piece of carpware.

My personal choice would be Eset NOD32 Business Edition
 
Look at F-secure, they have a nice easy to manage centralized console, exchange/server/workstation clients...
 
w1z4rd said:
Bitdefender sucks.... dont even bother with that piece of carpware.

My personal choice would be Eset NOD32 Business Edition
Click to expand...

I disagree.

We are currently using Bitdefender Client Security on more than 100 workstations. You've got a center management console, file server and optional mail server addons available.

It does not slow down the systems, the few problems we've had so far have been sorted out and it's blocked & cleaned thousands of viruses in the few months we've had it. The virus reporting service shows exact workstations as well as virus type and infection status.

This is a complete rollout after a massive uninstall from a competitor Antivirus Business solution and the big N which is known for it's hogging of systems and crap detection rate shows exactly what benefit Bitdefender has.

I'm not saying it's better than Eset though, I've got Eset on my own laptop, but the fact remains it doesn't suck either.

AVG made the balls up of the century end November, early December when one of their defs deleted a core system file on Windows systems that completely f'd up the boot process, making it impossible to load windows.

No one specific virus solution will be the answer, but take your time and read and find out what your business/environment requires.

Bitdefender has had 3 major updates to it's Business Client software in a space of a few months, from GUI improvements to Console improvements and this means it's actively being developed.
 
How many servers and clients do you have? Are they distributed across a WAN or are they all on a LAN. If on a WAN - what bandwidth do you have available? This will have a huge impact on the product you choose!
 
gregmcc said:
How many servers and clients do you have? Are they distributed across a WAN or are they all on a LAN. If on a WAN - what bandwidth do you have available? This will have a huge impact on the product you choose!
Click to expand...

+1

These aspects could filter the options available nicely.

:)
 
Corporate (small business, with dedicated server) enviroment F-Secure, home use AVAST! had no problems (so far!) Although last company I worked for swore by McAfee (big corporate, stupid choice IMHO!)
 
Well you are welcome to disagree, but from my experience (as it is sold a lot due to the fact that sellers make larger margins on it than they do nod32) it sucks. Ive dealt with dozens of corporates who have it ... and I dont know how many workstations..

Is it picking up USB viruses yet? Wasnt the last time I looked.

Its an over sold bad product in my experience.

teraside said:
I disagree.

We are currently using Bitdefender Client Security on more than 100 workstations. You've got a center management console, file server and optional mail server addons available.

It does not slow down the systems, the few problems we've had so far have been sorted out and it's blocked & cleaned thousands of viruses in the few months we've had it. The virus reporting service shows exact workstations as well as virus type and infection status.

This is a complete rollout after a massive uninstall from a competitor Antivirus Business solution and the big N which is known for it's hogging of systems and crap detection rate shows exactly what benefit Bitdefender has.

I'm not saying it's better than Eset though, I've got Eset on my own laptop, but the fact remains it doesn't suck either.

AVG made the balls up of the century end November, early December when one of their defs deleted a core system file on Windows systems that completely f'd up the boot process, making it impossible to load windows.

No one specific virus solution will be the answer, but take your time and read and find out what your business/environment requires.

Bitdefender has had 3 major updates to it's Business Client software in a space of a few months, from GUI improvements to Console improvements and this means it's actively being developed.
Click to expand...
 
w1z4rd said:
Well you are welcome to disagree, but from my experience (as it is sold a lot due to the fact that sellers make larger margins on it than they do nod32) it sucks. Ive dealt with dozens of corporates who have it ... and I dont know how many workstations..

Is it picking up USB viruses yet? Wasnt the last time I looked.

Its an over sold bad product in my experience.
Click to expand...

I see no real world evidence which makes it bad. It's not the easiest virus protection system to manage, but it sure beats the likes of Symantec, by far.

Bitdefender has been getting great ratings since version 8 and each version later they keep improving, the internet has many resources which speak of this and I don't mean virussoftwarereviews.com etc. :D
 
teraside said:
I see no real world evidence which makes it bad. It's not the easiest virus protection system to manage, but it sure beats the likes of Symantec, by far.

Bitdefender has been getting great ratings since version 8 and each version later they keep improving, the internet has many resources which speak of this and I don't mean virussoftwarereviews.com etc. :D
Click to expand...

Im sure it works nice for you tera. Im still wouldnt recommend it to anyone. If they produce a product that impresses me I will support it, and while they are better than Symantec ... theyre the next lowest on my list.

Ive got a copy of Internet Security 2009... and it still doesnt pick up USB autorun viruses :confused:
 
w1z4rd said:
Im sure it works nice for you tera. Im still wouldnt recommend it to anyone. If they produce a product that impresses me I will support it, and while they are better than Symantec ... theyre the next lowest on my list.

Ive got a copy of Internet Security 2009... and it still doesnt pick up USB autorun viruses :confused:
Click to expand...

AFAIK USB scanning options are enabled in the policies, so if it is or isn't picking it up, I'm sure it's just a setting somewhere.

I've read a few lows people have been having with V.2009 though, especially on their forums it's evident, but so does every other antivirus solution on the OP's list.

My personal preference (it's not BD) is Kaspersky. For the plain fact that it's the strongest most capable virus engine between the whole lot. AFAIK there are more Antivirus apps out there that rely on Kaspersky's engine than any other, which speaks volumes.

Kaspersky is quite advanced as well and they have moved with the times and the thing I love about it is that it takes almost zilch from your system. Eset has too many false positives in my opinion, as I was just reminded of it again a few minutes ago.

Kaspersky ftw in my books :p
 
We swapped to NOD32 business edition at my ex job last year, and I can say this. The client is smooth and doesn't eat up many resources. It did a good job of blocking many nasty infections, mainly USB based trojans.

However, the server management console is definitely not that great, it still needs lots of work in my opinion. Oh, it works, but is just a bit user unfriendly, and there also isn't too much in the way of reporting options.

That's my 2c :)
 
EchoZA said:
Corporate (small business, with dedicated server) enviroment F-Secure, home use AVAST! had no problems (so far!) Although last company I worked for swore by McAfee (big corporate, stupid choice IMHO!)
Click to expand...


For large corporates - Although McAfee AV might not be the best their management console is by far superior to all other products. (I've been through them all) When your managing 1000's of machines across hundreds of WAN branches they really do have a great product and they make it easy to deploy software/pattern updates across the WAN with minimal impact to traffic.

For small SOHO solution's where manageability is not that important, kasperky/nod32 works great.
 
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We use AVG Network edition on our network. 2 servers with it and +- 300 workstations. It seems to work quite nicely once its setup properly
 
Thanks for all the responses. In reply to the questions:

Servers:
1 x trixboxx
1 x postfix email
1 x virtual server (Xen) running
1 x Windows 2003 Server for ERP system (incl SQL server)
1 x Windows 2003 Server for file, print, active directory and terminal services
Clients:
16 clients across 3 sites in SA

All clients use "Terminal-serer-windows" so all client machines are effectively dumb terminals. I’m therefore skeptical of how a central management console could work considering no machines are natively configured in a domain environment.

All sites use a ADSL 1MB with a radio backup
 
bekdik said:
Have a look at trendmicro
Click to expand...

And then look away :)

Okay just been through a MAJOR virus outbreak and no jokes, tried them all. Everything that has been mentioned found certain virus/trojan/malware goodies and cleaned it so we thought we good to go. Decided to try Symantec Endpoint just incase even though I was dead against it because its so ***. Well I was left stumped that after these *clean* machines were checked that Symantec founds lots left over and now the machines are clean.

Lets hope!
 
Keep a close eye on Symnatec Endpoint, I have heard nothing but horror stories about it on some very techinical forums. I can't verify if it's true or not, but from what those poor guys were saying, Endpoint was giving them grey hairs.
 
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