[NA] Anti Virus & Anti-Malware Software

AggieMike88

AggieMike88

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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.
Seeking suggestions for Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware Software.

Payware or subscription based is okay.

Would prefer a product that a single purchase or subscription can cover both Win10 (my system at work) and MacBook (my personal laptop).
 
I've been using webroot, haven't had any problems that I'm aware of.
 
I generally use Avast which is free for personal use. I'm not sure if the free licensing allows for use on a business machine or not but here it is https://www.avast.com/en-us/index

I've also got a macbook and I don't even bother with antivirus on that. Mac viruses exist but are exceedingly rare, if you don't do anything dumb I'd say chances of getting something are almost 0.
 
I use Eset. Package price covers both Mac and Win.
 
If you are a Comcast subscriber Norton is free. There is also Malwarebytes free version. I run both and have had no problems.
 
Webroot is becoming the gold standard.

I have 212 PCs in my warehouse all running Webroot.
 
My IT guy has all 6 puters on BitDefender. $240/yr total.
It's not something I could install or tweak so I have to pay him too....probably $50.
 
Challenged said:
Bitdefender seems to consistently rank high with AV-Comparatives, in their Real-World protection tests: https://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php
Click to expand...

I tried BitDefender a few years back when I bought this computer because I'd heard so much good about it. I liked ESET, but I wasn't married to it, so I figured I'd give BitDefender a try. They don't offer a trial (or at least they didn't back then), but they did offer a money-back guarantee, so I gave it a shot.

I really can't speak for how well it dealt with malware because I didn't do any tests. But I do know it played havoc with other software with which it was unfamiliar, which basically meant anything other than a very few extremely common applications. When it didn't recognize an executable, not only the main executable but any of its child executables had to be whitelisted. I gave up after two days and went back to ESET. BitDefender was just too much of a pain in the ass.

That turned out to be nothing, however, compared to trying to get them to refund my money. I was two days into the 30-day "no questions asked" money back period, but they refused to even consider giving me a refund until I tried their "solution," which was to whitelist every single executable on the computer that BitDefender didn't recognize as safe.

I didn't have time for that ****. I also didn't have time to deal with BitDefender. So I called USAA (the credit card issuer) and let them duke it out with BitDefender. I think it took about 30 seconds for them to resolve the dispute in my favor once I sent them a link to the "30-day Money-Back Guarantee" page on BitDefender's site.

As for the rest, in my experience, antivirus companies and products all seem to have their "golden ages." I've used most of them over the years and have no special loyalty to any of them. I use them while I think they're the best overall solution for me, and when that changes, I use something else.

I like ESET because it has a small footprint and better than 99 percent real-world effectiveness. It's certainly never missed anything in my real-world experience. Of course, I'm a low-risk user; but all the clients on whose computers I've installed it over the years still seem happy with it (at least the ones I still keep in touch with, anyway), so I have to say that their "golden age" has lasted much longer than most.

If I had to choose an alternative, it would be Trend Micro. I used it for years but dumped it maybe 10 years ago because it got bloated and unstable. The new versions, however, seem to have fixed all those problems. It's definitely what I would try if I had to find an alternative to ESET today.

As for Webroot, I tried it many years ago and didn't like it, for reasons similar to the problems I had with BitDefender. The heuristics were just too sensitive and messed with too much of my FOSS stuff. I have no idea whether that's still an issue. I also suspect it wouldn't be an issue anyway if all a person uses is well-known software.

Rich
 
Trend Micro rates equally well in the chart I mentioned, so that's probably a safe bet too based on Rich's experience. I don't use Windows anymore so I can't directly speak to how well any of them work on that platform. I will say that we use ~ 5 products at work to scan incoming items and even performing back to back scanning I would say they only catch about 75% of the malicious stuff. I like to say that AntiVirus software is very good at catching viruses...from yesterday.
 
Challenged said:
Trend Micro rates equally well in the chart I mentioned, so that's probably a safe bet too based on Rich's experience. I don't use Windows anymore so I can't directly speak to how well any of them work on that platform. I will say that we use ~ 5 products at work to scan incoming items and even performing back to back scanning I would say they only catch about 75% of the malicious stuff. I like to say that AntiVirus software is very good at catching viruses...from yesterday.
Click to expand...

I find that properly-configured spam filtering on the server dramatically reduces malware, as well. It also helps reduce server load if it's upstream of the antivirus. The overall percentage of mail that's either spam or viral (or both) varies from 75 to 95 percent, depending on many factors including how stupid the user is. But most of the viral stuff never makes it to the antivirus. The spam filter gets it first.

On the client side I also use Mailwasher Pro and have for many years. That stops the rest of the crap before it even gets downloaded; so again, it never makes it as far as ESET. But most users find the two-step process it creates to be a bother. The process is also cumbersome at best on IMAP. I usually wind up using POP3 without auto-checking on the mail client and IMAP on MailWasher, which is far less-than-ideal, but does trap the crap that slips by the server-side filtering.

Rich
 
Personally I toss up between eset and sophos.. Sophos is free for 3 PCs on their home license, and cloud managed
 
I used to use and like Avast and BitDefender. They were light-weight, small, fast and free for home use.
However, that has changed over the years. The newest versions are bloat-ware and bother-ware. Big, slow, bulky and most importantly, popping up ads every day.
If you can find an older version of Avast or BitDefender, that would be a good solution. But they do not publish them for a reason, as you can imagine.
Though I hear that Panda Antivirus is still light-weight enough and not bothersome, you can look into that.
 
Rich and a few others mentioned ESET....

If you are an Ebates.com member, they are offering these deals...

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I use McAfee on several of our computers. Yeah, I know people have to pay for it. As an Intel retiree, I don't. Free is always good. :D
 
We recently started using Bitdefender on some of our machines as part of a 3 year agreement with another company, but I am not a fan of it. Even the other company is looking for another solution as they've seen issues.

As much as I may get bashed, I prefer Symantec (for enterprise). Their cloud version seems to work well for me on the other machines. A few years back, I disliked them very much, but they seem to have stepped up their game and reduced their overhead/footprint as well. Been running the newer version for about 3 years now and all has been good.
 
Ghery said:
I use McAfee on several of our computers. Yeah, I know people have to pay for it. As an Intel retiree, I don't. Free is always good. :D
Click to expand...

I used McAfee in the late 1990's and loved it. But in the early 2000's it went downhill. By the time I sold the business it had recovered to the point that I wasn't recommending it to people who needed a new AV, but I wasn't recommending that they uninstall it if they already had it.

Rich
 
Skyrys62 said:
We recently started using Bitdefender on some of our machines as part of a 3 year agreement with another company, but I am not a fan of it. Even the other company is looking for another solution as they've seen issues.

As much as I may get bashed, I prefer Symantec (for enterprise). Their cloud version seems to work well for me on the other machines. A few years back, I disliked them very much, but they seem to have stepped up their game and reduced their overhead/footprint as well. Been running the newer version for about 3 years now and all has been good.
Click to expand...

I had a client for a while who worked for Symantec as a salesman but wouldn't use their products on his personal computers. He had to use it on his company-provided machine, but on all his family machines he used something else. I think it was Trend Micro. The problem wasn't that it was ineffective so much as that it was bloated. I've been told by a lot of people that they've fixed that now.

They all seem to go through similar cycles. ESET is one of the few that hasn't. I don't know if I can say it's the "best" because there are many ways to define that. But it's consistently been very good for a very long time with no drama and a small footprint. It suits my needs, I've never had it miss anything, and I've never had a client complain about it.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
They all seem to go through similar cycles.
Click to expand...
I agree.
Also agree with your earlier comment about having a good spam filter.
Which may somewhat mask how effective, or not, an anti-virus solution is. So getting a true evaluation is hard. But layering is good, and as long as it works, I'll take it.
Haven't looked at Trend for years. Being a Chinese company, I never trusted that there weren't built in 'exemptions' for somethings they may have created. Yet, that could be any company.
Yes, I am a conspiracy theorist lol
 
Skyrys62 said:
I agree.
Also agree with your earlier comment about having a good spam filter.
Which may somewhat mask how effective, or not, an anti-virus solution is. So getting a true evaluation is hard. But layering is good, and as long as it works, I'll take it.
Haven't looked at Trend for years. Being a Chinese company, I never trusted that there weren't built in 'exemptions' for somethings they may have created. Yet, that could be any company.
Yes, I am a conspiracy theorist lol
Click to expand...

I have observed that there are some Chinese companies that are trying their best to shake their country's rather poor reputation for ethics and quality. When you find one, they tend to be outstanding in every way. However, there's also the fact that all of them are partners, to some extent, with the Chinese government; so even if they're the most ethical people in the world, ultimately they have to answer to Beijing.

So yeah, there's that.

Rich
 
Skyrys62 said:
We recently started using Bitdefender on some of our machines as part of a 3 year agreement with another company, but I am not a fan of it. Even the other company is looking for another solution as they've seen issues.

As much as I may get bashed, I prefer Symantec (for enterprise). Their cloud version seems to work well for me on the other machines. A few years back, I disliked them very much, but they seem to have stepped up their game and reduced their overhead/footprint as well. Been running the newer version for about 3 years now and all has been good.
Click to expand...

We use it at work. Not my choice and not perfect.

Centralized management support is decent. It warns us too much about useless things but better that than nothing.

The client software on the machines is very prone to breakage the users can’t fix (permissions) right after Windows updates. I think we’re up to our third round of reinstalling after those. Wastes a lot of our time.

We have other irons in the fire and I’ve been out a lot with the CFI stuff so nobody’s been hunting a better solution but the reinstalls tend to come and eat time that could be used for research. Funny how that works.

The Microsoft update thing (this is Win10 by the way) is mostly on MSFT. In fact in the last farce of this, Symantec released patched clients and MSFT then released OS patches to fix their screwup that broke Symantec and others. Annoying.

Mac support is weak but it’s one of the few that have it and have bare bones centralized reporting on the same server as the PCs, one of our “must haves” that has to be cross platform for various political and business reasons.

Annual licensing costs at our size are also reasonable. We’ve seen some other stuff that’s four times higher that might work a little better, but not worth the loss of capital to bother with it.
 
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