December 20, 2007 Antivirus Evaluation Minutes
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Contents |
Introduction
- This will most likely be the final meeting for the Fall Antivirus Evaluation Team. We may need to push some final decisions to early January. If so, minutes will be posted off the main page.
Products for Spring Team to Evaluate (required) - updated 1/10/08
- Symantec - Windows (suite), Mac is a hybrid of technologies (SEP 11 suite coming end of '08)
- F-Secure - Windows (suite), no Mac products
- McAfee - Windows (suite), only has antivirus product for Mac
- Microsoft - Windows/Mac suites (Mac product coming in Jan '08; details to be evaluated after release)
- Sophos - Windows/Mac (suites)
- Trend Micro - Windows (suite), no Mac products
Still Being Evaluated (updated since meeting, last was 1/30/08)
The 5 products below require further review post-December '07 before the Spring Eval Team. We will do our best to get enough data to eliminate a few more from this list.
- Questions to pose to the vendors:
- 5 largest higher-ed clients (installed base/# of seats)
- Are client/server communications done over a dedicated channel or standard Windows ports? If dedicated, is SSL used?
- What are their offerings for Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Mac OS X?
- US phone support available? 24-hour support available for Enterprise customers (for urgent cases)?
- Kaspersky - Windows only (no Palm OS) - Steve
- Responded 9 days after contact
- Education experience limited mostly to school districts, 1 smaller university
- Communication is done on port 14,000 for non-encrypted communications and 13,000 for SSL communications; both are configurable
- Supported mobile OS's include Symbian OS and Windows Mobile
- Standard support is 8am-9pm EST (call center on East Coast); 24-hour support is available
- Avast - Windows only (Mac product coming) - Caroline
- Never responded to inquiry
- Norman - Windows only - Dan
- They have one large contract with an east coast university that is comparable in size to Penn. The rest are much smaller contracts.
- (Updated 01/11/08) Uses a reserved port for communication and management of clients from the management console. The traffic is not encrypted, but uses own protocol for management purposes.
- Plan on supporting Windows Mobile 5 & 6, Symbian, and Blackberry. No Mac OS X or Palm support now or future.
- All Corporate customers receive phone/email support. Remote assistance is available. Emergency cases handled individually. No additional fee for all this.
- eEye - Windows only - Brian
- Never responded to inquiry
- BitDefender - Windows only - Brian
- Referred to reseller...waiting
Considerations to Pass Along to Spring Team
- Prior Higher-Ed experience is very important (in a large, decentralized environment is even more preferred)
- Product should have spyware integrated; can it be turned off?
- Consider available support options - phone is required; consider "domestic" phone support requirement
- Price should only come into play late in the game (when down to a few products)
- Consider importance of smartphones and how a/v and security suites could help protect them over the next several years. Determine how much of an impact having a product for the largest user bases of smartphones will have.
- Overall user experience (managed and unmanaged) - is it user-friendly; does it also have powerful management tools?
- How chatty is the a/v client and the suite?
- Consider the benefit of one company's product across platforms - we're thinking/hoping there will be at least a few really good products on both platforms
- How easily can the product be re-packaged/redistributed given our current channels?
- Can you create custom installer options?
- Consider which vendor has the best suite of products, not just antivirus. This probably makes a lot sense since all the above vendors have their antivirus products included in security suites and because computing security requires more than just antivirus protection nowadays. Still, put the most emphasis on the antivirus product in the package. Please avoid choosing a suite that has stellar "other" security products but has a sub par antivirus product.
