Old-school Anti-virus Vendors Learn New Tricks - Network World
Network World, by John Breeden
In an era when businesses are scrambling to defend against sophisticated advanced persistent threats, old school anti-virus may seem like a relic. But traditional anti-virus companies are changing with the times, delivering defense-in-depth for a BYOD world.
In this review, we looked at products from seven of the original anti-virus vendors, each dating back to at least the 1990s: AVG, ESET, Kaspersky, McAfee, Symantec, Panda Software and Trend Micro. We focused on ease of installation and management, ease of use, plus the protection each suite offered beyond traditional signature-based anti-virus. Special emphasis was placed on the software’s ability to also protect mobile devices running both iOS and Android. (Read an analysis of the antivirus market.)
We found that despite its shortcomings, traditional anti-virus remains an indispensable part of any network’s security posture. The reasons are twofold: First, anti-virus still works to catch the low-hanging fruit. An updated anti-virus database can protect endpoints from almost all of the typical threats that a user is likely to run into.
Secondly, companies in this review have added a slew of new features, including privacy scanners, social media link monitoring, behavioral analysis, tune-up software and anti-phishing protection, as well as the ability to lock down both computers and mobile devices.
The winner in our testing was Trend Micro Premium Security, which has one of the best overall packages for building a defense-in-depth across multiple devices. It was one of only two packages to catch 100% of exploits, with no false positives. And it has an easy to use interface, a quick install process, and a huge maintenance suite of helpful programs. (Watch a slideshow version of this test.)
Coming in a close second was Kaspersky Total Security, which also scored 100 in our exploit testing. Kaspersky also has excellent anti-phishing protection, an automatic exploit blocker, a firewall, and a feature that allows you to rollback a device to a pre-exploit state, should an attack get through. Plus, it has a unique Safe Money feature that protects users making banking transactions. Read more.
