[afnog] Antivirus for Academic Environments

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Simon,

On Mon, 11 Mar 2013, Simon Vass wrote:

> A friend of mine has blocked all USB Sticks on his desktops and allocated a 
> few places where you can get them scanned using a Linux Terminal. More 
> involved but very effective.
>
> Otherwise have has good experiences with both Kaspersky and AVG.

I must recommend strongly against both of these:

* Kaspersky has become an absolute resource hog in the last few years. It 
now requires 1 GB of RAM and it brings every machine to a painful, 
stick-forks-in-my-eyes crawl. I will not buy it again.

* AVG does not but I have seen cases where a machine is clearly infected 
and AVG does not detect it. Other AV products did in that case. I suspect 
their database is not as good due to lack of money.

I am currently using F-Secure for the last few months and I like it more 
than Kaspersky. It feels light and fast and doesn't slow the machine down. 
According to AV reviews there is a direct tradeoff between detection rate 
and resource usage, which makes sense but is disappointing:

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

Kaspersky's huge flashy graphics probably don't do it any favours on less 
powerful machines. (AV-Comparatives use a fast machine with 4 GB RAM for 
their benchmarks).

ESET Nod32 has a similarly low impact on performance to F-secure, but a 
much lower detection rate according to that site, so I wouldn't recommend 
it.

Cheers, Chris.
-- 
Aptivate | http://www.aptivate.org | Phone: +44 1223 967 838
Future Business, Cam City FC, Milton Rd, Cambridge, CB4 1UY, UK

Aptivate is a not-for-profit company registered in England and Wales
with company number 04980791.