Looking for Recommendations for Small Business AntiVirus Solution

[ppilot]

So I work for a small business and have taken on most of the IT related tasks by default (nobody was doing them before I arrived). The company has 19 employees with 12 having computers.

As a part of beefing up our network security, I started doing some research on Business level Anti-Virus Solutions didn't get a lot of clarity about the difference between the different options (BitDefender, Norton, Avast, etc). Also, best practices would have this in places in addition to a firewall solution, correct?

Any thoughts, suggestions?

 

[joegreat]

I would suggest Sophos UTM - you can test the Home Edition for free...

 

[RMerlin]

If you have a Windows server, I recommend the Trend Micro Worry Free suite. It's very easy to manage and deploy, and has been protecting multiple customers for years now.

I have one customer on the Eset suite (Mail Security + Endpoint Antivirus) because I wanted to have an alternative in a production environment. It's a bit more complicated to manage, but it's also a very strong suite.

Norton's solution isn't bad, but I would look at a hosted solution if you absolutely want to go with them. Their on-premise server has always been a nightmare in terms of manageability and performance whenever I had to work with it. Their endpoint client is a bit resource-intensive as well (I used it for a while at my previous office, and I had to disable some of its features that would bring my i7 CPU to its knees while doing LAN transfers at gigabit speed).

If you don't have a Windows server, I'd go with Eset. Up to you if you want to install its server management console or not. All of my non-domain customers are on Eset..

Having an UTM might be nice, but it's up to you to determine if this network needs it and you can justify the expense (don't forget that some of these require yearly licence renewals).

For spam filtering, have a look at Trend Micro's product (it's part of their Worry-Free suite). I've had excellent results with their hosted solution. Eset's solution works fairly well, but I had more problems dealing with false positives with it.