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What Anti-virus do you use?
I don't use anti-virus, but am thinking of getting either norton or mcafee i think are the two most popular. Anyone wanna share details on what they use and why?
fd
Saturday, November 8, 2003
EZ Trust Antivirus, because it's the only AV product I've found that will run on Win2k Server without charging an arm and a leg (which is really odd, because it's from CA)
Philo
Philo
Saturday, November 8, 2003
For the desktop I use AVG6 free editon from www.grisoft.com
Works great, and they have a professional edition as well.
Stephen Jones
Saturday, November 8, 2003
[Note that the professional edition won't run on win2k server, though AVG's server edition is the cheapest server edition I'm aware of]
Philo
Philo
Saturday, November 8, 2003
I don't use any as Windows xp is the most secure ever and I think that with Microsoft's new security religion, I have nothing to worry about
Chen
Saturday, November 8, 2003
Except when forced to by corporate policy, I've never used any anti-virus beyond any evaluation purposes. They were all too intrusive, and given nearly 2 decades of virus free activity, I don't lose any sleep over it, either.
Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Saturday, November 8, 2003
Common sense is my anti virus protection.
Saturday, November 8, 2003
I've been using e-Trust from CA for the last 3 years, and I haven't had any incidents at all, server OS or no.
Greg Hurlman (blogs.squaretwo.net)
Saturday, November 8, 2003
Like Brad, I've never been hosed by a virus in all my years, but nevertheless, since I work in a fairly lax IT dept with LOTS of trigger-fingered novice users around, I am not cavalier enough to go without an AV utility running, just in case.
I have always used the Norton line as I've had little or no application conflict type problems with it and, as I mentioned, have never had any virus catastrophes. (Whether that means that NAV is really doing that much or whether it just means that I'm a nervous nellie who doesn't take many risks is debatable)
My only real complaint with Norton is that it seems to be fairly resource-intensive...if anyone here has compared several AV products in that respect, it would be interesting to see your findings...
Tim Lara
Saturday, November 8, 2003
Ditto Brad and Tim, I find AV products too intrusive and too resource intensive. I hate hearing my HDD start crunching when I'm not even touching the keyboard. I hate those multi-second pauses whenever I access a large file. I hate the general sluggishness of my PC.
I run without AV protection and have never been hosed by a virus (knock on wood). However I am pretty anal about backing up my data frequently, so if I ever do get hosed I will simply format/reinstall and reload from a backup. The time required for a complete reload would be roughly equivalent to those precious seconds lost over the course of running with a "protected" PC. Plus it eliminates the frustration I experience when my 3GHz P4 runs like a 386SX-25.
Matt Foley
Sunday, November 9, 2003
I use Norton Internet Security and have no complaints thus far.
Man on the street
Sunday, November 9, 2003
Matt Foley: if AV vendors fixed the way they scan would you use it?
Wait, that's a dumb question. They will never fix it. It's been like that since the beginning. All this time they could have build digests of kosher files and cached comparisons and monitored new file adds, updates, and deletes and do on the spot checks during idle time. Like what tripwire folks are trying to do with the giant software vendors of the world. But why do all that when you can just take the money home and spend it on nice cars?
Li-fan Chen
Sunday, November 9, 2003
I have used Symantec and Norton antivirus and currently use norton. On Linux I have mostly gone without. Do they help?
AVs don't cover the threat model nearly enough. And vendors are quicker to place blame (oh the white hats didn't tell us first! *wahhhh*) and coming up with half ass fixes then putting forward preventive measures:
1. You shouldn't have to buy Zone Alarm, most av senior engineers should have seen this a mile away in 1996 and written what zone alarm does (allow only proper programs to do outbound connection, stop the trojans) as an integrated part of any security plan. They didn't.
2. A major consumer firewall vendor then started selling a personal firewall that was also missing that feature for the longest time (see grc.com's article on this)
I don't sleep any better,
but I have it installed.
I badly need sleep.
Vendors please get your acts together!
Li-fan Chen
Sunday, November 9, 2003
McAfee helped me by detecting the Blaster worm when it was new - and the AV was NOT updated.
It detected it as a generic RPC exploit.
Jarred
Sunday, November 9, 2003
---" You shouldn't have to buy Zone Alarm"---
You don't have to; the free one works perfectly
--"most av senior engineers should have seen this a mile away in 1996 and written what zone alarm does (allow only proper programs to do outbound connection,"-----
Do you realize how small a number of computers world wide were connected to the Internet in 1996? I think Finland was the only country in Europe that went above 10% of the population connected. I don;t recellect anybody being really bothered about Trojans until three or four years later.
Stephen Jones
Sunday, November 9, 2003
"Do you realize how small a number of computers world wide were connected to the Internet in 1996?"
True, but ......
There has been a shift in virsues over the last few years. Viruses used to be destructive (delete files or otherwise farq your system) and virus writers were little more than the computer equivalent of vandals who like to go around smashing windows.
That seems to have changed -- maybe the virus writers of 10 years ago grew up and got tired of being destructive. Today, most virsues don't do any harm to the host system,
their main function is to spead as widely as possible, for a variety of purposes -- DOS attacks, sending out spam, etc.
However, given that "always on" broadband connections have been around a while (I've had a cable modem since late 1999) I think that the AV companies are long overdue in adding a built-in firewall-type function to their products.
I did not have sex with that Woman
Sunday, November 9, 2003
"I think that the AV companies are long overdue in adding a built-in firewall-type function to their products. "
I agree. Most vendors alreeady have a firewall product. Their view is why roll this into one when I can sell them two products. Plus you know people are used to $39 or $49 for AV, now it's $89 or $99 - why.
And logically shouldn't that large monopoly hailing from the Pacific Northwest build a DECENT firewall in and have it RUN by default, especially seeing how they are all about trustworthy computing now? Yes I know XP comes with a firewall, it is one step above worthless and not turned on by default.
Mike
Sunday, November 9, 2003
At work we switched from Norton to CA's E-trust, and promptly found a lot of stuff that Norton missed. CA also seems to be less resource intensive than Norton--the IT department no longer gets complaints about slow computers during the weekly, company-wide scan.
Justin Johnson
Sunday, November 9, 2003
Those who say they haven't had viruses in years ... how do you know if you don't have software to detect them? They may be present without you noticing. You could have Trojans that are transmitting your keystrokes or data files, which go undetected by your firewall because they have embedded themselves in another executable which is normally allowed to access the Internet.
NoName
Sunday, November 9, 2003
So for the really paranoid you accept the fact that you buy a 3ghz machine but really end up with a 2ghz machine because of av and firewall software load.
If you had keylogging trojans, you would probably notice it on your bank and credit card statements. Those people aren't monitoring you for typos you know.
Mike
Sunday, November 9, 2003
I had Pinfi for I don't know how long. I only bothered to check because
a) a vague feeling that my system wasn't working right
b) a "disk full" message 2-3 times on a disk with GB of space free
That prompted installing an AV program and working to eradicate the bugger. (also had two other dormant viruses in downloaded exe's)
Philo
Philo
Sunday, November 9, 2003
---"you buy a 3ghz machine but really end up with a 2ghz machine because of av and firewall software load. "----
This is absolute rubbish. Running Task Manager to check on their CPU usage actually uses more CPU time than both firewall and anti-virus combined.
I can't tell whether I have Zone Alarm on or off; the only time anti-virus is a problem is if you let it run its scheduled scan while you are trying to do something else on the machine. The answer is to set the scheduled scans to run when you are sleeping or elsewhere. If you've got real time protection on you can leave the scheduled scans to once a week or less.
Stephen Jones
Sunday, November 9, 2003
1. Common Sense, I've also never had a virus.
2. AVG Free, Just installed it a week or two ago, actually.
3. Zone Alarm, and when I really want to know what's going on on the network:
4. Ethereal Packet Sniffer, just to see if a random computer is pinging me like crazy, indicating someone else might have a virus.
www.MarkTAW.com
Monday, November 10, 2003
Trend OfficeScan is nice on a network. It's cheap and has a good web-based tool to manage your workstations. You can even push install. The single user version is called PC-Cillin and that's what I recommend to my friends for home use.
On my own home computer I use nothing since Mac viruses are exceedingly rare. :-)
Nate Silva
Monday, November 10, 2003
Another vote for e-Trust and some commonsense.
Also Kerio Personal Firewall.
Dave Hallett
Monday, November 10, 2003
Currently moving 120+ pcs to Kaspersky from Norton. Main reason money, ~$4,000 worth. So far we have it on only a few of the PCs and it is running nicely. We also run their definitions on our email server and it has been very strong to date. It does not seem to place any more of a strain on the system then the last version of Norton we were running (2000?). It however is not as fast as the new version of Norton. Before we went with this package I installed the new version of Norton and it was noticably faster and easier to configure then the last version.
Jeff
Monday, November 10, 2003
Tried both out - thought Norton was two slow - McAfee was much faster. Although I go to the Symantec web site to get removal tools??
DJ
Monday, November 10, 2003
Pc-Cillin came bundled with my machine but it conflicted big time with the spool manager for my little old Lexmark 2030.
I use Grisoft's free edition now and have never had one single problem with it. I use Tiny Personal Firewall too.
Fernanda Stickpot
Thursday, November 13, 2003
I think Norton has hired a group of guys to sit in a cubical to make viruses all day. Why not? We're none the wiser and they're a dollar richer. I'm anti-anti-virus software. Just delete Outlook, don't open retarted attachments, don't share floppy's and cd's and don't surf porn. Virus free since I built this thing, like 2 years ago.
rta
Thursday, April 22, 2004
" You could have Trojans that are transmitting your keystrokes or data files...."
The only Trojans I have...well...
James Duley
Thursday, April 22, 2004
I used to use "common sense" to avoid virus spyware/adware etc. then i realized you can get worms just from being connected, especially when your horribly unreliable satellite isp's gateways are infected like mad (personal problem, sorry..)its about time to get some virus protection.
Ive used norton for two years or more. If your compitent enough to disable some of the services it wont lag your system much at all except when scanning. you can stop it from doing auto-anything if your not too lazy to DL updates and scan yourself. The 2k4 vers is nice as it searches for spy/adware and other notoriously annoying little proggies but ive had problems randomly with virus updates not applying themselves. come to find out it was a denial of service type virus that affects norton itself. w32.pinfi is hell on earth too. had to use trend micro's free online scan to disenfect when norton was crapping out. overall i think its good av. you get what you pay for y'know.
thedigerati
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
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