Which one would you choose and why

[Aqua]

Hi

 

Our AV software is up for renewal and I am wondering which of the following I should seriously consider. We have old/very old hardware (laptops mostly) so resource hungry AV is a NONO.

 

 

1. Sophos

2. Eset (good reviews and easy on resource requirements)

3. Kaspersky

 

I have also been offered as part of the LEA deal free McAfee but I am not sure about them. Used to swear by them years ago but now feel they have lost their way a little and are uncertain about the resource requirements. Moreover just because they are a free option for us does not make them an automatic choice (IMHO)!

 

Grateful for any experience with the above so I can draw a shortlist of 2.

 

Thank you very much for any input.

 

Regards

H

[Oaktech]

ESET has been good for me for the last 4 years.

[JSchlackman]

I would avoid Sophos due to numerous bad experiences with it in the past. Same goes for McAfee, so I agree with your decision not to shortlist them.

 

I evaluated ESET and Kaspersky a few years ago and both seemed good choices at the time; we went with something else in the end but I'd have been happy with either of them.

[dhicks]

Our AV software is up for renewal and I am wondering which of the following I should seriously consider.

 

We use ESET - good price (£500 a year for a 400 pupil, 100 staff sized school), seems to deploy round workstations okay, doesn't seem to heavy on resources, seems to be quite discreet for end-users (doesn't produce endless popups). It did recently let a workstation here get infected with a Zeus botnet virus, but seemingly no antivirus client actually stops all threats these days - that infection was more the fault of our email filtering system, which should have been looking out for infected emails.

[Edu-IT]

Have you thought about Vipre?

[Aqua]

We use ESET - good price (£500 a year for a 400 pupil, 100 staff sized school), seems to deploy round workstations okay, doesn't seem to heavy on resources, seems to be quite discreet for end-users (doesn't produce endless popups). It did recently let a workstation here get infected with a Zeus botnet virus, but seemingly no antivirus client actually stops all threats these days - that infection was more the fault of our email filtering system, which should have been looking out for infected emails.

 

Where did you go to get that price I have been quoted £1600 for 2 years (200 devices, 50 mailboxes and some servers)??

 

Thank you.

[tmcd35]

Of the three - I'd give ESET alook. Never heard great things about Sophos and I've used Kaspersky. But... Are you an EES school? If so then you already have Microsofts Endpoint Protection, although that does require a SCCM server which is a pig to set up.

[Mr_Jiminy]

, although that does require a SCCM server which is a pig to set up.

 

But worth it

[dhicks]

Where did you go to get that price I have been quoted £1600 for 2 years (200 devices, 50 mailboxes and some servers)??

 

I rang up ESET directly, their sales staff were very good - simple, straightforward. We have 160 devices, which might explain some of the price difference.

[ThatBoringBloke]

although that does require a SCCM server which is a pig to set up.

 

Doesn't actually require an SCCM server. You can simply extract the MSI's and install it. You are then able to manage it through GPO's.

 

All you don't have by not using SCCM is a central management console, but then how often do you look at that anyway?

[AngryTechnician]

Doesn't actually require an SCCM server. You can simply extract the MSI's and install it. You are then able to manage it through GPO's.

 

All you don't have by not using SCCM is a central management console, but then how often do you look at that anyway?

 

Can you still set up detection alerts (e.g. by email) without SCCM?

[synaesthesia]

No you can't. Reporting should be seen as essential with AV - that's a big box ticked for e-safety, data protection etc. It's great for a workaround but please don't use a product without reporting, alerting etc permanently.

[Aqua]

I rang up ESET directly, their sales staff were very good - simple, straightforward. We have 160 devices, which might explain some of the price difference.

 

Thank you.

[MatthewL]

ESET and Kaspersky would be the two I would look at, been looking at Kaspersky in a school today and I am quite imrpessed with it.

[robjduk]

I have Kaspersky and although it is ok I find it hard to do some things which I believe should be simple along with its huge renewal price (about £10,000 for 950 clients for 2 years). Am currently looking into Sophos at the moment.

[SteveM555]

We've been using Symantec for years and moved to Sophos last Summer.

 

It was a learning curve getting things right with Enterprise Console at first; (there are required GPOs for deployment) but when it's all up and running it's great.

 

Automatic deployment, centralised exceptions/reporting/updates etc. They also provide you with a standalone version for staff laptops (that do not update from the local server)

 

We have found it to be non-intrusive and even ran well on the older XP machines we used to have.

 

A quick note though; if you use Impero make sure you have a central exception for it - It doesn't come up as a virus but blocks some files and disables Impero on certain machines. It is done from the Enterprise Console and is very straightforward to fix.

[caffrey]

Sophos here, never had any issues in 5 years, client is running on old hardware without any issues. I am looking for cheaper alternatives but Sophos is already reasonably priced.

[bodminman]

Just moved to ESET here as our Vipre renewal was ridiculous.

 

Give Kelly at BIST a call for pricing. We got 3yrs cover for 140 machines for just over £1k inc vat.

 

[ninjashadow]

We use trend micro and i found that it works perfectly for us. Have never had an issue with it. It has very few false positives if any. We have been using it for just over 2 years.

[cpjitservices]

Have heard really good things about ESET, I've never actually used it on a corporate network though.

 

We use Sophos, with Endpoint Protection and Management Console.

[Aqua]

Thank you for your helpful feedback.

 

For those of you who are using ESET are there any items of concern regarding either config or protection from the product?

 

Thanks again.

[Oaktech]

Thank you for your helpful feedback.

 

For those of you who are using ESET are there any items of concern regarding either config or protection from the product?

 

Thanks again.

 

Configuration took about 20 minutes. Pieces of cake!

 

The protection seems very good. Since we went to it, we've not had any kind of infection and, according to reporting, it catches about 5 nasties a day from various sources.

[MattHarwood]

Another very happy ESET customer here. Paid around £1k for 3 years on 150 endpoints (Endpoint Antivirus).

 

Deployment and updating is seamless and invisible to end users. Reporting and monitoring of detections and problems (such as clients not updating) is straightforward and useful. Support when needed has been perfect, and the footprint on system resources is probably one of the best you're going to get, especially considering the effectiveness of ESET's engine.

[Bankesy]

Hello

 

I back the ESET AV, currently running it in this school with clients both on and off the domain with no updating issues

[rich_tech]

Our LEA provide it to us here, we shifted from Symantec when I first started to Kaspersky 6 then, recently upgrading to V10 of Kaspersky, was going ok until the upgrade, seem to be minor issues with nag tabs now and such which we cannot turn off and are dealing with, its not a bad product, infinitely better than Symantec and I like things like USB scanning now working properly.