I think I've found a AV suite worse than Sophos....

[Tunster]

We dropped it in 2008 or 2009. I liked being told that visiting a machine manually was the only way to view its logs at the time, sounds like the performance hasn't changed although I'd hope the management might be better than it was back then?

We've stuck with it from 2006 and my only main two issues were the initial setup with clients (especially when we moved over to Vista/7) and version 9 (not 9.5) was terrible (and crashed an awful lot). A lot of corporates are still with version 7, but that retired at the end of last month.

 

The console is extremely good now and logs things properly once you have the correct services open on all workstations (easily configured with group policy).

 

I've not worked with any others professionally but I don't think Sophos is as bad as people make it out to be here. It is power hungry at times; but now we've gone through our next cycle, that isn't an issue.

 

The basic fact is that they all have their pro's and con's.

[CAM]

I'm a Trend Micro user myself and at home it only uses up about 34,000K according to Task Manager (thats about 34MB?). I don't even know it's there, it updates and scans almost silently.

 

Sophos is a resource hog though, and didn't do much in our Conficker outbreak at work. It stopped the virus from running and propagating but let it install anyway. LC-Jump also ran rampant across the network with Sophos able to clean it up but again, not block it.

[jimmy_2k]

Interesting to see this many replies to the thread and AVG not mentioned once. Does that mean no-one uses it or that people use/used it and have no strong opinion of it either way? We use it here and have no problems with it, but then I don't really have anything to benchmark it against as the only other time I've had to administer AV was 12 years ago.

 

I've had AVG for about 10 years on my home PC and not had a problem yet, would love to roll it out in school.

[SpuffMonkey]

I've had AVG for about 10 years on my home PC and not had a problem yet, would love to roll it out in school.

 

We use corporate AVG here and have done for about 5 years, when I was desperate to ditch Symantec and didn't have much budget - the central console is clunky as hell to work with, but it does work, and seems to detect stuff. I've switched the web side off, as that was a bit of a hog - but in general - not bad for the price. Alas its a big refresh and it looks like I've got to have Symantec again from the summer - has it improved any in the last 5 years?

[El_Nombre]

Anyone out there use F_Secure or have any experience of it? Our uni used to run it, would be interested to find out if it's worth a punt...

[HodgeHi]

I switched from End point to Sophos. During my testing (downloaded the trial) I found that Sophos seemed to run relatively well on my server 2003 member server. Pulled in the Computers from the OUs Ok and deployed to all the machines with no issues once the download of the updated client install completed.

 

I have used earlier versions of Sophos but it seemed to miss a fair bit. When I moved schools they had symantec Corporate edition which I found to be quite good. It did have issues deploying the client at times though but in the whole it did tend to stay out of the way. Now we upgraded to end-point. Man, is that thing dodgy. After trying to resolve an installation issue, I upgraded (after checking the system requirements using Symantec's own tool were OK) to 11.6.2 or something like that only to find that the system came to a complete crawl. Opening the central console took about 15 minutes and thats before logging in.

[JaSauders]

I like Kaspersky. It keeps telling me Windows 7 on my PC at home is a virus ;-)

 

That's because it is.

 

I've always used AVG and Avast (rare occasions) on my Windows boxes. It's never let me down. Even on older hardware when scheduled scans start with AVG I don't notice.

[Edu-IT]

So avoid Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 then? I've just looked at Avast and it's quite pricey in comparison.

 

Seems there's not a good word to say about any of them, really?

 

Hmm.

 

Edit: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/security-news-trends/security-trends/enterprise-review.aspx

Edited May 16, 2011 by Edu-IT

[Edu-IT]

Interesting comparisons here too from Gartner.

 

http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/about/media/industryanalysts/Gartner_MQ_endpoint_protection_platforms_17Dec10.pdf

[ovek]

It's still better than F-Secure

[sparkeh]

I think Sophos is pretty good these days. Had to stick with it through during the dark days at one school due to the school buying a long renewal period but glad they did.

Console is good, software easy to deploy, machines easy to manage and it actually does something with viruses now

 

Symantec Endpoint 11 on the other hand...

 

Edit: Though if you plan to move the Sophos Console to another machine, have a stiff drink first

Edited May 17, 2011 by sparkeh

[ZeroHour]

Sophos is okay, we used it, the engine could be lighter but all the parts certainly worked but earlier versions had some major issues, version 5 still gives me shivers

 

AVG, I presume you were talking about paid? the free version is the worst AV on the planet tbh and I have had to fix far far to many peoples computers that were infected although avg was up to date. MSE FTW.

[bondbill2k2]

Not had many issues with sophos beside the update setup being long winded and changing versions becoming a pain on clients and server.

[gomalley]

I've just looked at Avast and it's quite pricey in comparison.

 

I have Education pricing for Avast that is ££££ (yes that is four pound signs) cheaper than Symantec, and by far the cheapest out of all the quotes I have (Symantec, ESET, Sophos, McAfee and Kaspersky)

 

Guy

[2097]

Eset and sophos are the best

 

I removed mcafee staight away ! Load of rubbish !