Antivirus protection is a basic element of the successful operation of any office. In this article, we will discuss how to choose antivirus for your business and consider the best alternatives to such software.
The role of antivirus software in the corporate system
The complex system of technical protection of information is an important and integral system of objects of information activity, in particular their information-analytical systems, systems of electronics, and telecommunications. There are more than enough antivirus solutions on the market today to protect corporate networks. In such conditions, it is very difficult to choose a really suitable solution. The usual selection criteria, which are guided by users of home computers, will not be used here, since the focus is on ease of management and deployment, as well as support for the required operating systems and applications.
A modern office can have more than a dozen, or even a hundred computers, not to mention the presence of several servers that play very different roles: mail, file, teamwork, and so on.
How to choose a good antivirus?
Antivirus programs use two methods to perform tasks:
- View (scan) files to find known viruses that correspond to the definition in the dictionary of viruses.
- Finding suspicious behavior of any of the programs that are similar to the behavior of the infected program.
There are the following main types of antivirus programs: real-time programs, control programs, and online antivirus. Real-time programs run in the background of the operating system and scan all files, programs, and RAM.
What are the alternatives?
Corporate solutions are built according to the “client-server” scheme, the management process at all stages from installation to updating databases and collecting data on the work of agents is carried out from a remote console. The server part contains a SQL database, while for small networks the capabilities of the built-in database, supplied free of charge with the distribution kit, are usually sufficient. In order to save Internet traffic, anti-virus clients are updated from an internal server. This is where the commonality between corporate antiviruses ends. Each implementation has its own characteristics: support for OS and platforms for the server and clients, binding to specific software (for example, IIS or SQL Server), the functionality of client modules, localization. And, of course, there are differences in price and licensing specifics. In all these issues, we will try to figure them out. The most preferred solutions on the marketplace are:
- Avast business antivirus
- Symantec Endpoint Protection
- Kaspersky Open Space Security
- Web Enterprise Suite
- ESET NOD32 Smart Security Business Edition
Avast business antivirus – a good choice for your business system
And now let’s look at the possibilities of the well-known, but much less advertised on the network antivirus Avast. The basis of the corporate version is the Avast Professional Edition (or NetClient Edition for use with the ADNM management utility), which is designed to protect workstations from viruses, rootkits, and spyware. In addition, the client checks incoming and outgoing mail, P2P, and IM traffic, blocking potentially dangerous scripts on web pages.
It gives us the opportunity for maximum protection from all sides. Its advantages over other competitors include:
- automatic update of signatures three times a day;
- the presence of network protection – without connecting different packages manually, the program will do everything for you, just agree;
- the ability to check files for rootkits – which is not in any other antivirus;
- the ability to check archives for malware;
- the ability to check the files that are downloaded during the download;
- convenient and clear program interface.