School Information Technology Discussion <[log in to unmask]> on
Wednesday, March 08, 2006 at 1:20 PM +0000 wrote:
>Dear List:
> 
>Here is a report from a guy at Colby-Sawyer. The test is a bit dated at
>this point, but for what it is worth he said the best product was NOD32.
>Like many of you I just got a letter from SWexpress as they are now a
>reseller of the product.
> 
>"We use Nod32 on every computer on our network, servers, college owned
>desktops and student computers."
>Scott Brown
> 
>R.
> 
>[
>/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.eset.com/resources/Colby_Sawyer_white_paper.pdf
>]http://www.eset.com/resources/Colby_Sawyer_white_paper.pdf


The report reviews Norton Antivirus, not Symantec Antivirus Corporate
Edition, which we use in Brattleboro.  It says there's no support for NAV,
there is for SAV, I call a number and talk to a live person, not that I've
had to very often.

Other issues to consider are cost and managability.   The report states
that the cost of NOD32 is $39, is that once, forever, or is there an
annual fee for updates?  SAV cost us something like $12 for initial
licenses, and then $4 and change per year for updates, per workstation. 
(If you work in a public school, you are getting software quotes from ASAP
software, I hope.  I've never seen anyone beat their prices on software.)

As to managability, with SAV you set up a management server, or several
(we have one), the management server downloads the updates and then starts
pushing them to the client workstations, so we don't have to use our
internet bandwidth 500 times whenever updates come out, which is virtually
every day.  I trust NOD32 does too, though the report doesn't say.  We can
get reports off the management server of what the last update date is for
each managed workstation, so we can tell if a workstation falls behind
because something in the client breaks, which one occasionally does, or if
the user just hasn't plugged into the network in a while.  We can also see
if SAV has detected any malware, which a good indicator the user may need
some instruction in safe surfing.

Of course none of this matters much if the product didn't keep us safe,
but we've had good luck with it since the release of version 10.  Older
versions didn't detect spyware and adware, and I'd spend hours weeding
stuff off machines that were hopelessly choked with malware, but SAV
declared them clean.  Not so with version 10, I'd say I don't spend 10% of
the time I spent last year on that sort of work any more.   From what I
hear, the school network went down completeley due to infected machines
flooding the network twice the year before they hired me, but we've had no
significant outbreaks with SAV since.

Now, if you're on a REALLY tight budget, I used to use F-prot where I
worked before, it's really cheap if you license it in quantity, I used to
pay about $2/workstation/year.  Support was by e-mail only, and kind of
slow, but you get what you pay for.  It was a solid product, consumed very
little resources, but none of the bells and whistles of SAV.   It might be
appropriate for a small school, but with 600 workstations and only one of
me, I needed a bit more manageability.   The F-prot engine is licensed by
F-secure, and Command antivirus, and I think a couple of others, too, so
that shows you what the industry thinks of that little company from
Iceland.