What corporate AV do you use?

I am now at a point where my company needs to purchase an antivirus program to cover a little over 100 XP/Server2003 machines. Dont ask me why they dont already have one...not a fun conversation.

I've downloaded the trial version of Symantec Endpoint 11, and it seems straight forward from an implementation standpoint. I've used its management console and installed a client. I also know that Norton is traditionally a resource hog and buggy.

I have no frame of reference to make this decision on what brand to use other than a second hand story that was big on ESET.

We need a corporate AV that I can manage from 1 PC, and push out updates. I want it to be mostly transparent to the users - ie not a resource hog or give them popups. Need to run it on a W3k3x64 server with XP clients...and W7 in the near future.

With that said...im interested in what products you guys have had good/bad experiences with.

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Comments

brad-

On a side note...what kind of server would you guys install this on?

I have used the trial versions of ESET Nod32 and Symantec Endpoint 11, and neither would update their virus definitions from my XP workstation. Firewall blockage I assume. Given that we dont have a dedicated machine for this task....I have to choose between installing it on a Firewall, Domain Controller, or SQL Server. Those all have over 6 gigs of RAM.

Bokeh

Moving to Endpoint shortly after upgrade to our CRM software. For home use, Its Vipre from Sunbelt Software. Best I've seen and no bloatware.

GAngel

brad- wrote: »

On a side note...what kind of server would you guys install this on?

I have used the trial versions of ESET Nod32 and Symantec Endpoint 11, and neither would update their virus definitions from my XP workstation. Firewall blockage I assume. Given that we dont have a dedicated machine for this task....I have to choose between installing it on a Firewall, Domain Controller, or SQL Server. Those all have over 6 gigs of RAM.

You should log the systems to see which has the least usage. If those were my only three options my answer would be no.

itdaddy

Symantec need IIS 5.0 or higher and ASP.net and a few enironmental
services running it uses...

been on hold for 2 days for symantec enterprise support
the upgrade f'd up my existing 10.1.8.800 version of the console manager
all machines are lost..and just mess everything up

admins beware. make sure to take screen shots of all your setting
like exclusion folder and files and groups in old symanatec because the upgrade to 11.5 might destroy them all.

the phones at symantec corp are jammed for 2 days no help
because their techs are that busy with the new deployment it is a mess
buyers beware of symantec messed up

TechJunky

We use Symantec here, enterprise.

Server Team utilizes the hercules system. They seem to like it.

crrussell3

A little tip with the Symantec upgrade from 10.x to 11.x. Don't "upgrade" the management server. Do a side-by-side install, and migrate your users over. This is even recommended by Symantec themselves. You will save yourself the headache of a failed upgrade. Currently it is what I am doing, and having no issues, except crappy WAN links so I have to migrate a few at a time with GPSI.

MentholMoose

I really dislike the SEP 11 console. I don't know why Symantec completely changed it from SAV 10. I used SAV 10 at my previous employer and thought it was good.

At my current employer we use Sophos. It seems to work OK. I'm not in change of managing it though, so I can't comment on the console.

HeroPsycho

dynamik wrote: »

This is why a defense-in-depth approach is recommended. Use a different product to filter your internet traffic, email, workstations, etc. If you use the same product everywhere, it will likely fail in the same place every time. The downside of using multiple vendors is that more expertise is required. Swapping out a product you know like the back of your hand only to replace it with something you don't know how to properly configure is probably a worse situation.

Or use Forefront with two engines in it...

the_Grinch

We use Panda at my work and I actually really like it. I hadn't heard of it prior to working there, but it is light on resources and very easy to manage. We have the cloud version so I can see every PC it is loaded on, which are updated, and get stats on what it finds. Also, it has a p2p solution for updates so keeps the bandwidth low. Only thing I don't like is not being able to schedule when updates take place (so to set it during off peak times).

NinjaBoy

someeh wrote: »

Ninja,

How is your experience with Panda? My company uses Eset.

We've found it to be very good, we've had no outbreaks of any viruses (we have approx 1400 users) and it's not heavy compared to other AV's that we've used, like Symantec, Sophos. At the time it was cheaper than Mcafee (don't know about now, as we bought a 3 year license). And upgrading between major version is a piece of cake compared to AVG.

The only down side, or issue that I've had with them was their Windows 7 support. We had to wait a while for it.

We've even recommended and installed it at 2 other organisations (we also provide IT Support for external customers).

But like I said, when it comes up for renewal, I'll be looking at Forefront Client security. Mainly due to better integration with the OS and AD, plus we already use ISA. Plus we also use the WS1000 & ES1000 hardware appliances from Sophos to protect us (imo their hardware is alot better than their software). So we're really protected from all angles

Hope that helps

-Ken

astorrs

HeroPsycho wrote: »

dynamik wrote: »

This is why a defense-in-depth approach is recommended. Use a different product to filter your internet traffic, email, workstations, etc. If you use the same product everywhere, it will likely fail in the same place every time. The downside of using multiple vendors is that more expertise is required. Swapping out a product you know like the back of your hand only to replace it with something you don't know how to properly configure is probably a worse situation.

Or use Forefront with two engines in it...

+1 I've become a fan of the single app, multiple engine methodology

stupidboy

Our internal IT team (I've never worked out why we have internal IT, when over 60% of the staff are IT engineers/consultants) decided that McAfee was rubbish (they did not understand how to manage ePO basically) then decided on Panda ... I mocked them heavily for this decision

. This year the standard has been raised to Trend, going against my recommendation yet again. The detection rate has been utter rubbish with Windows Defender picking up infections before the AV and in some cases neither have alerting to infection.

I've used a stack load of AV in the past and each has it little "value added features" (you didn't have the pay for the bugs

). I am a big fan of Kaspersky (however, ditched it when you could buy it in PCWorld

). NOD has set a whole new level, low overhead and outstanding detection.

F-Secure uses a multi-engine approach, however, when I used it last the overhead was very noticeable but very high levels of detection.

It's still NOD for me

rwwest7

We use Symantec Endpoint for active scanning and Malwarebytes for cleaning up when someone clicks on one of those "your computer is infected, click here to clean" pop-ups. Symantec is great but don't even think about putting it on anything with only one core and less than a gig of RAM!

tiersten

Kaspersky false positive on Google AdSense script. Oops...

tiersten

NinjaBoy wrote: »

Plus we also use the WS1000 & ES1000 hardware appliances from Sophos to protect us (imo their hardware is alot better than their software).

The boxes just look like a generic your-brand-here rackmount PC. Is there such a difference when their software is running on them with their OS + config versus a standard install on your own box?

petedude

itdaddy wrote: »

. . .
But I think Avast is very light weight and effective..I use it for home and also run Avira which I love and I never catch anything but a cold and I surved some risky sights if you know what I mean

Any false positives with Avira? I have a couple items it's flagging that it keeps flagging, even after restoring the allegedly affected system files with SFC.

N2IT

joecontreras wrote: »

We use AVG. As mentioned above there are some things that may slip through from time to time but nothing major or more so than anything else we have tested.

My problems with Symantec and McAfee products is that when they malfunction all hell seems to break loose. I always keep Norton's Removal Tool and McAfee's Removal tool on my thumb drive to remove these when this happens.

+1 Symantec End Point. We have 40,000+ users on it.