Anti-Virus Software

Retrieved from ISED-L list serv 12/10

I thought I would put in a plug for Sophos as an AV system. I chose them for their potential to support macs (though I did not need it) but their centralized management far exceeded my experiences with McAfee, Symantec and CA eTrust.

OakHill School changed from Symantec to TrendMicro. As a newbie, I find TM to be pretty easy to navigate and administer. The pricing was really good in comparison to ESET, AVG and Vipre. I checked a few others too.

Marlborough School switched this summer to a managed host intrusion prevention service (MHIPS) from a company called the DigiTrust Group (www.digitrustgroup.com). They handle all aspects of host security, from installation to remediation and actively monitor and report on all hosts. It is obviously more expensive than just AV licensing, but the service that comes with it has freed up a significant amount of my staff time. We now have more than just installed software, we have someone actively looking at logs to make sure nothing is being missed.
Key School switched from Sophos to NOD32 ESET which has been working well. It has good spyware handling and some of the best AV detection rates in the industry. It's also very lite on the client (about 20MB of RAM).

St. Agnes moved from Sophos to Microsoft Forefront in 2010. We moved from Sophos to Microsoft Forefront this year and have been very happy with the price and performance. Microsoft has received solid reviews on the VB100 bulletin. I have used McAfee, Symantec, Panda, Sophos and Microsoft. Microsoft Forefront and Sophos have been the best solutions I have used in the last ten years.