I’m looking for an antivirus for a medium-size client (60 Windows XP workstations, 4 Windows servers, 1 Linux server) and hell if I know what to do.

Over the past three years I’ve worked with Panda (both the old antivirus and the new BusinesSecure), Kasperksy, Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee antiviruses. Which is the one I liked the most? Absolutely no one. Everyone of them fails here or there: bad support, bad antivirus, bad or no antispyware, bad or no antispam, bad or no Active Directory integration, etc.

What I want to find is an integrated suite with at least these features:

  • Antivirus (of course!)
  • Antispyware
  • Antispam for the client workstation. Server antispam is not important for us, really. We prefer to run CRM114, SpamAssassin or alike.
  • Firewall
  • Backup, a-la Genie Backup, Cobian Backup, etc
  • Automated updates for antivirus, antispyware and antispam modules
  • Automated deployment of Windows, Microsoft Office, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird updates (think of WSUS on steroids)
  • Full integration with Active Directory, including cluster mode
  • Certified for SAN, NAS and high-availability clusters

I guess that’s exactly what Symantec is going to do (at least, it makes a lot of sense after they bought Veritas), but I expect at least six to twelve months until they have such a product 🙁

The antivirus business is currently a “choose your poison” business. Lame.

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