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Antivirus and Antispyware for the Home and Corporate user

Since endpoint protection is of growing importance in the security industry, you will see some major technical advanced this year.  I expect this to be one of the hot buttons for acquisition as technologies such as whitelisting and more connected heuristics create a more advanced software landscape.

Since I have quite a bit of experiance and I do keep on top of the industry I believe that I should outline some of the tools I recommend in both cases.

One side note, I do not use MacOS so I cannot recommend any software for Macs.  If Apple can apply some of the success they have had with iOS to OSX then I may have to spend more time thinking about them on the PC front.

Corporate AV/Antispyware:

  • Mcafee - Does a good job with a suite, but ePO is still a bloated tool which is hard to manage effectively without creating gaps.
  • Symantec - I don't recommend the products for endpoint protection, in my experience I see too many missed viruses with the product.
  • Trend Micro - Does a good job at a lower price point than the big two in AV
  • GFI Vipre - My personal favorite, this is a cheap easy endpoint antivirus solution which works very well.  There are a few gaps in the product they should shore up in the next 6 months, but overall I would recommend this product in a corporate environment.

I have more I would recommend, but I am not going to cover them.  Products I would like to test for corporate use:  Avast and Microsoft.  If I have time I will try both of them in the next couple weeks.

Personal AV/Antispyware:

  • Microsoft Security Essentials - This is what I would tell my mom to use, it works, and its maintenance free!  Sometimes this is the best option for a typical end user.
  • Avast - This is what I recommend and run.  In version 6.0 they have added a lot of new features and improvements.  
  • AVG - Another very good option, this would probably be my second choice personally
  • Microsoft Defender - Its free and does a decent job preventing spyware
  • Spybot S&D - Free and works great for spyware infections
  • CCleaner - Free, and this is a great overall system cleanup tool.  It will fix spyware issues, registry issues, and other problems.  If you don't run this type of tool every month or so, your windows installation will slow down in a much shorter amount of time.

Comments

Skadz said…
For home stuff, you should also check out malwarebytes.org. Their program saved my ass when trying to get some crap off a buddy's computer a few months ago. None of the other virus checker/cleaners I tried got it off.
Sunday, February 27, 2011 10:11:00 PM
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