Anti virus for new Windows 2003 Servers

We're trying to stay away from Symantec and boiled down to 3 anti-virus for our new servers (and 30+ workstations running on XP and 2k).

These are:
1. Sophos
2. NOD32 - sounds like a virus
3. Kaspersky - and this one too

Any thoughts on these programs? Pros/Cons - ease of use and installation, licensing, price, etc..
If you have other recommendations I'd certainly appreciate it.

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Comments

nel

well out of the 3 i have used sophos at work. Seems OK and has picked up a few viruses over the time but THANKFULLY it hasnt been put against a real threat so its hard to tell. th eone thing i would say about the version of sophos we have is that it takes up ALOT of system resources, i mean im not kidding we had some pc's which were using 256 happily then bam! we put sophos on and had to upgrade them all to 512!

ive heard good things about kaspersky, im actually thinking about getting an eval copy of this for my home pc because ive heard all round its the best out there, but again i havent used it first hand so i cant put my house on it!

and the 3rd one i havent heard of or come across as yet.

dynamik

DPS and I PM'd about this yesterday, and I'll throw in my vote for Kaspersky.

RTmarc

NOD32 all the way!

http://av-comparatives.org

IT_Admin

I believe either of the first 2, should be suffice. I have heard nothing but rave reviews from both products from various ppl..

Just stay away from E-Trust... piece of ****...die!!

NinjaBoy

I've had nothing but trouble with Sophos. I actually would recommend Panda.

-Ken

bertieb

We've been using Nod32 Enterprise Edition for 2 years on over 250 servers and it's been great.

Admittedly, we've had a couple of false positives (mostly IIS logfiles!) which we could probably stop if we changed some of the indepth settings, but overall it's been stable, fast and the central reporting tools with the Enterprise Edition are great for pleasing upper level managers and clients alike.

I wasn't that impressed with Sophos when we tested it, but thats mostly my personal opinion.

RussS

Computer Associates

paintb4707

NOD32 has been rated the best scanner in several comparison articles. My only other choice would be Kaspersky.

And please, if you install Panda on your server take a screenshot for me. Because I'll laugh.

Lee H

Wouldn't it be an ideal solution to only need AV on the proxy server, scanning all incoming traffic for virus's

This would negate the need for client AV's

Lee H

sprkymrk

Lee H wrote:

Wouldn't it be an ideal solution to only need AV on the proxy server, scanning all incoming traffic for virus's

This would negate the need for client AV's

Lee H

Viruses introduced via thumbdrives, CD's, floppies, VPN's, SSL, or actually written and compiled on a local workstation by a malicious user would all wreak havoc on your network.

We do have AV scanning on the firewall of http, ftp and email traffic as part of an overall defence though.

networker050184

Lee H wrote:

Wouldn't it be an ideal solution to only need AV on the proxy server, scanning all incoming traffic for virus's

This would negate the need for client AV's

Lee H

What about viruses introduced from within the network from a thumb drive or other device?

edit: you beat me to the punch!!!

dps

So we decided to try the eval copy of Sophos for our servers.
Turned out the Central Console program (w/c is a separate program) is not compatible with 64-bit machines. The tech support guy told me the actual program itself is fine with 64-bit machines but the Console program (program to update/install Sophos to workstations) isn't.

So i decided to un-install the program and look for other options.
NOD32 and Kaspersky?
Hmm...
Have to take a look on these two.
Any other choices? Is Trend Micro any good?

Thanks for all your input.

RTmarc

Trend sucks.

Seriously dude, take a look at NOD32. I can honestly say it's one of the only AV solutions I've ever worked with that the only interaction it has ever needed was me installing it the first time. I installed it and have never had to worry about it again. The fact that just about every machine gets the exact same client is wonderful! I can force it out company-wide with a single push and be done with it.

BigTone

We have etrust and have had to uninstall it from our servers because it does something to our webconfig and knocks everyone out of our web application.

I'm not sure if its e-trusts fault, or our crappy web app... Maybe both?