what's the best corporate antivirus?

I used Symantec endpoint protection for years. This year, they sold out and made the platform unrecognizable. I need a new cloud based system to sell to my clients. For those in the IT field, what do you use, and what is the best for ease of deployment, maintenance, and renewal?

Thanks in advance. My client base is small businesses from 5 to 100 employees.

a reply to: network dude
I'm sure I'll get some naysayers, but why not look at Malwarebytes? I use it on all my clients systems, and they have business/enterprise versions of the software. They're also friendly to resellers.
MBytes

Check out Vipre. www.vipre.com.... Small footprint. Been using it for years.

Common Sense v1.0

a reply to: schuyler

thanks, that's the kind of thing I'm looking for.
do you use it as a home user, or for clients as well?

originally posted by: schuyler
Check out Vipre. www.vipre.com.... Small footprint. Been using it for years.

My company used Vipre for years. As an IT guy I liked it a lot! After our contract expired my director had me implement Bitdefender cloud which has also been very good. At times I miss Vipre, admin was super easy.

a reply to: Klassified

I use malwarebytes but it's more of an "in addition to" for me than an "all on one" solution. I take care of some clients that are less than particular about where they click. So I need to mitigate threats as much as possible. thanks for the reply!

We use Sophos Intercept X.
Sophos

This along with two factor authentication and strict firewall/group policy rules.

originally posted by: ManSizedSquirrel

originally posted by: schuyler
Check out Vipre. www.vipre.com.... Small footprint. Been using it for years.

My company used Vipre for years. As an IT guy I liked it a lot! After our contract expired my director had me implement Bitdefender cloud which has also been very good. At times I miss Vipre, admin was super easy.

the ease of admin is important to me. I don't need to spend non payed time messing with some strange platform.

originally posted by: network dude
I used Symantec endpoint protection for years. This year, they sold out and made the platform unrecognizable. I need a new cloud based system to sell to my clients. For those in the IT field, what do you use, and what is the best for ease of deployment, maintenance, and renewal?

Norton was pretty good when it was still owned and controlled by Peter Norton. Once he sold it, it went downhill quickly and turned into a bloated mess that I refused to work with. At one point, after it was bought by Symantec I believe, it was rewritten from scratch - maybe even more than once - but each time, it starts out pretty good, then just goes downhill.

McAfee is by far the worst.

I won't support anyone who uses such garbage. Either they uninstall it (even if they just bought a 3 yr license), or they find someone else to help them. The reason being, it is more than likely causing whatever problem they came to me for help with.

My client base is small businesses from 5 to 100 employees.

I have been using ESET (formerly NOD32) for about 15 years, and it has never let me down.

I highly recommend it, even for home users, but it's Enterprise version is amazing, and very easy to manage. They offer both a Cloud based management solution, or - what I prefer - a local appliance for their ESMC (ESET Security Management Center) management console.

originally posted by: Klassified
a reply to: network dude
I'm sure I'll get some naysayers, but why not look at Malwarebytes? I use it on all my clients systems, and they have business/enterprise versions of the software. They're also friendly to resellers.
MBytes

I'd love to add Malwarebytes to my arsenal, but I don't consider it a full replacement for AV, and it costs more than my ESET license.

It is one of the only protection solutions I recommend anyone buy, if they want paid protection.

a reply to: jtrenthacker

thanks. Does this seem to get most threats before the end user gets them?

originally posted by: network dude

originally posted by: ManSizedSquirrel

originally posted by: schuyler
Check out Vipre. www.vipre.com.... Small footprint. Been using it for years.

My company used Vipre for years. As an IT guy I liked it a lot! After our contract expired my director had me implement Bitdefender cloud which has also been very good. At times I miss Vipre, admin was super easy.

the ease of admin is important to me. I don't need to spend non payed time messing with some strange platform.

Bitdefender Gravityzone has kept us very safe so far but it can be a little wonky sometimes rolling it out to clients. I do like that it has the ability to use your local Active Directory but I don’t go that route because that seems a little risky.

originally posted by: tanstaafl
I won't support anyone who uses such garbage. Either they uninstall it (even if they just bought a 3 yr license), or they find someone else to help them. The reason being, it is more than likely causing whatever problem they came to me for help with.

When your anti-virus program IS a virus ...

a reply to: tanstaafl

the base system looks cost efficient, you have had good luck with minimal end user trouble?

I thought this was going to be about Covid at first.

Refreshing but I no longer keep up with computer stuff, ten years ago I would have been able to help but everything has changed since then when I used to love tracking down viruses and ridding a computer of them manually. I had a disk and used that to go through bios to get access to a computer. It took hours to go clean out data so the computer could be started and worked on. Once I got some memory back I could identify the virus or worm and go in through the program and delete the virus if I didn't have time to do it till the memory filled up.

Those days were kind of fun.

a reply to: Snarl

lol, that's how Mcafee makes me feel. It's way to intrusive and asks too many questions. My users want to work and not be bothered with stuff I should be bothering with.

a reply to: rickymouse

Agree. I used to make it a personal vendetta to root out a virus and avoid a reload. Once the did away with Windows 7 and I could no longer use my go-to combofix, I just use the usual backup methods and reload when a system is compromised.

a reply to: tanstaafl

I'd love to add Malwarebytes to my arsenal, but I don't consider it a full replacement for AV, and it costs more than my ESET license.

I use it as a full replacement on my own machines and clients and have had good success with it. More so than the others I've tried, but I understand some of the prejudice against it. It isn't as polished for network use as others who have been around for longer and could use a little tweaking. Most of my businesses are small networks, so it has done a great job, even with the careless clickers ND alluded to. lol

Honestly, you and ND probably are better suited to judge what will work on larger networks than I am. I've stayed with smaller clients for a reason. I'm a one man show, so I have to keep up on my own.

While none of them are perfect, it seems to be very effective. We might get some phishing emails that get through from time to time but that’s when good customer training comes in. We require all employees to take a training course for best practices. This seems to be more effective than any endpoint protection.