Good Antivirus solution for school networks...

[Geir]

Hi,

What is your suggested antivirus solution if you were a school network
admin?

'My' school used Norman from before I got hired and I dislike their
akward admin application. They don't score particulary high in virus
protection tests either.

I want an effective AV solution for our staff and the student pcs which
is easy to manage (updates and reports of unsuccessful virus removals
etc). The AV engine should not be a resource hog (i.e. not Symantec)
and do fast checks and scans...

Thanks for comments and sugestions..

regards

Geir

 

[Kayman]

Hi,

What is your suggested antivirus solution if you were a school network
admin?

'My' school used Norman from before I got hired and I dislike their akward
admin application. They don't score particulary high in virus protection
tests either.

I want an effective AV solution for our staff and the student pcs which is
easy to manage (updates and reports of unsuccessful virus removals etc).
The AV engine should not be a resource hog (i.e. not Symantec) and do fast
checks and scans...

Thanks for comments and sugestions..

Avira AntiVir® PersonalEdition Classic - Free
http://www.free-av.com/antivirus/allinonen.html

Free antivirus - avast! 4 Home Edition
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
http://free.grisoft.com/

BitDefender10 Free Edition
http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-en--BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html

Kaspersky® Anti-Virus 7.0 - Not Free
http://www.kaspersky.com/homeuser

ESET NOD32 Antivirus - Not Free
http://www.eset.com/
Have you seen these "extra settings for NOD32"?
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=37509

And:
For viral malware...
Download David H. Lipman's MULTI_AV.EXE from the URL --
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

To use this utility, perform the following...
Execute; Multi_AV.exe { Note: You must use the default folder C:\AV-CLS }
Choose; Unzip
Choose; Close

Execute; C:\AV-CLS\StartMenu.BAT
{ or Double-click on 'Start Menu' in C:\AV-CLS }

NOTE: You may have to disable your software FireWall or allow WGET.EXE to go
through your FireWall to allow it to download the needed AV vendor related
files.

C:\AV-CLS\StartMenu.BAT -- { or Double-click on 'Start Menu' in C:\AV-CLS}
This will bring up the initial menu of choices and should be executed in
Normal Mode. This way all the components can be downloaded from each AV
vendor's web site.
The choices are; Sophos, Trend, McAfee, Kaspersky, Exit this menu and Reboot
the PC.

You can choose to go to each menu item and just download the needed files or
you can download the files and perform a scan in Normal Mode. Once you have
downloaded the files needed for each scanner you want to use, you should
reboot the PC into Safe Mode [F8 key during boot] and re-run the menu again
and choose which scanner you want to run in Safe Mode.
It is suggested to run the scanners in both Safe Mode and Normal Mode.

When the menu is displayed hitting 'H' or 'h' will bring up a more
comprehensive PDF help file.
http://www.ik-cs.com/multi-av.htm

Additional Instructions:
http://pcdid.com/Multi_AV.htm

Good luck

 

[Geir]

Kayman wrote:

Avira AntiVir® PersonalEdition Classic - Free
http://www.free-av.com/antivirus/allinonen.html

Free antivirus - avast! 4 Home Edition
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
http://free.grisoft.com/

BitDefender10 Free Edition
http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-en--BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html

Kaspersky® Anti-Virus 7.0 - Not Free
http://www.kaspersky.com/homeuser

Hi,

I'm not necessarily interested in *free* solutions. We see no problem
in paying $30 for a 3-year license.

However we want quality (high recognition and removal success) and
excellent administrative tools - which give us a good current AV state
of all clients connected...

Geir

 

[Leythos]

Hi,

What is your suggested antivirus solution if you were a school network
admin?

'My' school used Norman from before I got hired and I dislike their
akward admin application. They don't score particulary high in virus
protection tests either.

I want an effective AV solution for our staff and the student pcs which
is easy to manage (updates and reports of unsuccessful virus removals
etc). The AV engine should not be a resource hog (i.e. not Symantec)
and do fast checks and scans...

Thanks for comments and sugestions..

Symantec Corporate Edition 10.2 For Workstations and Server, very light
on resources, nothing like their home products, central management from
a server, reporting from a central location, etc...

Yes, Symantec home edition products are resource pigs, but their
Corporate Edition 10.2 for Workstations and Servers is fast, light, very
easy to manage, and you can even control what the users can change on
their workstations (from the server).


--
Leythos - (e-mail address removed) (remove 999 to email me)

Fight exposing kids to porn, complain about sites like PCBUTTS1.COM that
create filth and put it on the web for any kid to see: Just take a look
at some of the FILTH he's created and put on his website:
http://forums.speedguide.net/archive/index.php/t-223485.html all exposed
to children (the link I've include does not directly display his filth).
You can find the same information by googling for 'PCBUTTS1' and
'exposed to kids'.

 

[Leythos]

Avira AntiVir® PersonalEdition Classic - Free
http://www.free-av.com/antivirus/allinonen.html

Free antivirus - avast! 4 Home Edition
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
http://free.grisoft.com/

BitDefender10 Free Edition
http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-en--BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html

Kaspersky® Anti-Virus 7.0 - Not Free
http://www.kaspersky.com/homeuser

ESET NOD32 Antivirus - Not Free
http://www.eset.com/
Have you seen these "extra settings for NOD32"?
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=37509

Most FREE editions can not be installed in a Business or other Company
type situation. You need to check licensing if you use them.

--
Leythos - (e-mail address removed) (remove 999 to email me)

Fight exposing kids to porn, complain about sites like PCBUTTS1.COM that
create filth and put it on the web for any kid to see: Just take a look
at some of the FILTH he's created and put on his website:
http://forums.speedguide.net/archive/index.php/t-223485.html all exposed
to children (the link I've include does not directly display his filth).
You can find the same information by googling for 'PCBUTTS1' and
'exposed to kids'.

 

[Vanguard]

Better read the licensing for the free versions. Most do not allow
use beyond home and personal use (and some even exclude non-profit
organizations).

Avira AntiVir® PersonalEdition Classic - Free
http://www.free-av.com/antivirus/allinonen.html

Not a good solution. The free version is actually a 3-month trial
version. See http://preview.tinyurl.com/2ztmrk (Google Groups
thread). High coverage as measured by independent testing at
http://www.av-comparatives.org. Nagware due to banner dialogs that
open during updates (which also interferes with fullscreen programs) -
use an IPS program, like System Safety Monitor, to block their
avnotify.exe from loading to eliminate the ad dialog (but then SSM or
any IPS isn't for newbies). This AV program has excellent (maybe the
highest) coverage so if you want it then buy it to get rid of the
nags.

Free antivirus - avast! 4 Home Edition
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

I and many other users have found this to significantly slow the host.
Testing on file downloads (the time after the download for the AV to
scan the file and when downloading hundreds of files) had one AntiVir
process gobble up 100% CPU and severely slow downloading (or anything
else that creates lots of files will severely slow the host). Also,
their exclude list only lets the user define a pointer to the excluded
file (i.e., path and filename) and does not use a hash to ensure the
file selected is the actual one excluded (so you could end up having
the scans excluded a virus that slide in under the same path and
filename). Consumes twice the memory as AVG.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
http://free.grisoft.com/

Light on resources. Coverage on Windows viruses a bit too low in last
testing at http://www.av-comparatives.org (next test results expected
at start of this September). No password to lock program settings
(don't recall if AntiVir and Avast have password locking). Free
versions are often aimed at the single user.

BitDefender10 Free Edition
http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-en--BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html

Provides no on-access (realtime) protection. Only provides an
on-demand scanner; i.e., the only time it runs is when YOU run it.
Won't detect the invasion at the time it occurs.

 

[Robert Moir]

Hi,

What is your suggested antivirus solution if you were a school network
admin?

'My' school used Norman from before I got hired and I dislike their akward
admin application. They don't score particulary high in virus protection
tests either.

I want an effective AV solution for our staff and the student pcs which is
easy to manage (updates and reports of unsuccessful virus removals etc).
The AV engine should not be a resource hog (i.e. not Symantec) and do fast
checks and scans...

I'd second the comments about Symantec Corporate AV vs Nrotten home AV that
Leythos already made. Having said that, I reccomended years ago that the
college I work for switch to F-Secure's enterprise type product and we've
been very happy with it. It's a good scanner, it can be centrally locked
down and managed and you can use various methods to install it onto
workstations including generating MSI installers from the management console
that you can allocate to workstations in active directory which is handy if
that is how you work.

 

[Virus Guy]

What is your suggested antivirus solution if you were a
school network admin?
The AV engine should not be a resource hog (i.e. not
Symantec) and do fast checks and scans...

If you can get your hands on it, an older version of NAV (say, 2002)
works just fine and is NOT a resource hog. It's just as effective as
any recent version since scan-engine updates are supplied with virus
definitions during on-line updating.

When installed from the CD, it's good for 1 year of auto-updates, then
it expires itself, but can be re-activated for another year by
uninstalling and re-installing it (which sounds like a pain, but
doesn't take long).

 

[foghollow]

Hi,

What is your suggested antivirus solution if you were a school network
admin?

'My' school used Norman from before I got hired and I dislike their
akward admin application. They don't score particulary high in virus
protection tests either.

I want an effective AV solution for our staff and the student pcs which
is easy to manage (updates and reports of unsuccessful virus removals
etc). The AV engine should not be a resource hog (i.e. not Symantec)
and do fast checks and scans...

Thanks for comments and sugestions..

regards

Geir

A lot of UK schools are going with Sophos. Even the infant school (ages 5-7) my kid will go to next
year! When I was 7 computers still used valves...
Standard set-up is you have a local server that grabs updates from Sophos and gives them to your
workstations, that server also runs a management console that lets you do all the monitoring you
need. These days their default check-for-updates period is every 5 minutes!
They can also bundle in a desktop firewall and a scanner for your mailserver.