Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: roo_ster on September 13, 2016, 08:26:46 PM
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I have been paying Kapersky for their A-V tool the last few years. Kapersky made it easy, worked well, and I could pretty much not think about A-V on the home desktop.
But now Kapersky is making it too much a PITA to renew the license and pay them. If they are going to make me work for it, I might as well manually remove their old product, download and install the new product and then skip the "paying Kapersky for the crappy payment/upgrade path" step. Since their upgrade and license renewal includes all those steps.
So, which is the go-to freeware A-V for Windows these days?
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FWIW, I've been throwing the free Avira on various things, just to try something different. No problem so far.
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I'm still using Microsoft Security Essentials. I know it's not the best anymore, but I think I get some protection from my router hardware too. I'm curious what other folks are using now instead of MSE.
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Bitdefender is the only free AV I use for my clients. Avira is OK; but the pop ups get annoying, and their detection rate varies. Security Essentials is pretty much a lost cause.
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I tried Bitdefender and I didn't like it, but I don't remember why. It had nothing to do with actual virus detection -- I didn't have it long enough to test it.
I have been using Avast! on most of my computers for several years and, except for one machine, I've been happy with it. The exception is an XP machine on which I run Mozilla Thunderbird as an e-mail client for the e-mail account associated with being a moderator on an Internet forum. Apparently, Avast! doesn't play nicely with Thunderbird, so on that machine I dropped Avast! and I've been using AVG. AVG seems to work, but their pop-ups are much more annoying than Avast!, and AVG periodically insists on restarting the computer. I just went through that this morning when I sat down to check e-mails.
I'm not familiar with Avira so I can't compare it against Avast! and AVG.
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I tried Bitdefender and I didn't like it, but I don't remember why. It had nothing to do with actual virus detection -- I didn't have it long enough to test it.
I have been using Avast! on most of my computers for several years and, except for one machine, I've been happy with it. The exception is an XP machine on which I run Mozilla Thunderbird as an e-mail client for the e-mail account associated with being a moderator on an Internet forum. Apparently, Avast! doesn't play nicely with Thunderbird, so on that machine I dropped Avast! and I've been using AVG. AVG seems to work, but their pop-ups are much more annoying than Avast!, and AVG periodically insists on restarting the computer. I just went through that this morning when I sat down to check e-mails.
I'm not familiar with Avira so I can't compare it against Avast! and AVG.
Avast is pretty good, I just got tired of fielding a ton of calls every time there was a program update. Instead of just doing it, Avast takes the opportunity to try to upsell to its paid version each time. The wording of their ads is apparently confusing to a lot of people. AVG slows even decent machines down noticeably. Avira is lighter on system resources then either of them.
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I'm still using Kaspersky, but feel roo_ster's pain, having just jumped through the renew hoops, which had me jumping through URL hoops. Plus I ended up turning off some of the Internet security, like SafeMoney (I have the Internet suite, or whatever it's called) because it started not working or ridiculously slowing things down in some browser apps. I still believe the base virus protection to be top notch.
I still play with free prgs on a fourth machine that's not covered under my Kaspersky license. I've found all the free ones are ridiculous on the ad pop-ups and upsells these days*. AVG used to be my goto free prg, but I think it has the worst adware as of now. I've been running Avast lately which isn't quite as bad.
I think any of the major free prgs mentioned above will do the job. I'm actually thinking about purchasing Avira (or maybe even AVG) just to see what the difference is between the free and paid interface.
* I can't really blame them, no matter how annoyed I get. If everybody leeched ad-free, they'd be out of business and we'd be complaining about the dearth of good free or cheap anti-virus prgs.
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Thank you all for your help.
In the past I used AVG & Avast freeware AV as well as both Macafee and Norton payware (in addition to Kapersky).
Will nose around a bit more, but I am inclining toward the Bitdefender bundled product Bitdefender Family Pack:
http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/family-pack.html
We are down to one Windows box in the house, but Android devices have been breeding. Now have 5 operating Android devices. I already use Avast freeware AV on my Android device, but want a relatively maintenance-free solution to cover them all. Plus, kiddos are using the Windows desktop more. Also going to switch to the OpenDNS FamilyShield DNS servers for the home router.
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So, which is the go-to freeware A-V for Windows these days?
cfdisk from a bootable linux flash drive.
Also great at reducing clutter.
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At work, we're having significant issues with AutoDesk 2017 product suite and Kaspersky. I've used Kaspersky for decades and I'm a paranoid over performance kinda guy. I'm getting annoyed. Their web site overhaul is also getting on my nerves.
There's not a lot of great options. We're pondering Sophos. Not remotely as good, but less annoying.
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At work, we're having significant issues with AutoDesk 2017 product suite and Kaspersky. I've used Kaspersky for decades and I'm a paranoid over performance kinda guy. I'm getting annoyed. Their web site overhaul is also getting on my nerves.
There's not a lot of great options. We're pondering Sophos. Not remotely as good, but less annoying.
Ayup. They are losing me to annoyance. Kapersky is failing in the "keep the customer sold" column.
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cfdisk from a bootable linux flash drive.
Also great at reducing clutter.
Linux has no room to speak about not sucking. Any attempt to say otherwise can be firmly rebutted with one word, systemd. It's an honest toss up between Win8 and systemd for which one sucks worse. Win8's UI was pants on head retarded. Systemd RUNS pants on head retarded. Also Linux malware is significantly picking up.
Ayup. They are losing me to annoyance. Kapersky is failing in the "keep the customer sold" column.
I did a review on all the major players, just yesterday, if you want me to post. It's all enterprise, but more or less conveys over to each company's home user version as well.
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Linux has no room to speak about not sucking. Any attempt to say otherwise can be firmly rebutted with one word, systemd. It's an honest toss up between Win8 and systemd for which one sucks worse. Win8's UI was pants on head retarded. Systemd RUNS pants on head retarded. Also Linux malware is significantly picking up.
Haven't run linux at the house for a while and I run linux at work on older versions of RHEL. So I haven;t seen systemd up close.
I did a review on all the major players, just yesterday, if you want me to post. It's all enterprise, but more or less conveys over to each company's home user version as well.
Please do.
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AV-Test.org current Windows 10 business use scores:
Vendor, Protection, Performance, Usability
April 2016
Kaspersky 6 4.5 6
Sophos 6 4 6
Symantec 6 6 5.5
Trend 6 4.5 6
F-Secure 6 5 5.5
December 2015
Kaspersky 6 6 6
Sophos 6 5 5.5
Symantec 6 5.5 5.5
Trend 6 5.5 6
F-Secure 6 5.5 4.5
Baseline: Kaspersky Endpoint Security 10.2.5 1yr Select
Cost: $3275
Good:
Consistantly highest or near highest detection rate, moderate resource consumption, well featured, detailed reports, excellent antivirus filtering on email, good to great support
Bad:
Configuration can be highly complex, reports are not pretty, event logs are not as detailed as desired, can be finicky at changes but generally stay fine once resolved, moderately expensive
Trend Micro 1 yr
Cost: $3687.21
Good:
Cloud, expensive normally but offering competitive pricing for new clients, good Office360 support, pretty reports, interacts with vSphere, moderate resource consumption
Bad:
non-granular controls (some can't be changed), higher false positive rate, installs own webserver, reports look nice but can be undetailed, update servers are in Japan rather than worldwide, occassionally need to reinstall clients if they lose connection to cloud for too long, limited support for outdated OS. Requires vShield to be installed.
Sophos Cloud Endpoint 1 yr
Cost: $6172.46
Good:
Good support. Cloud dashboard. Generally considered lower resource consumption. Gaining in popularity in recent years.
Mixed:
Easier to configure, but less granular. InterceptX is extra, specialized antiransomware that looks for weird crypto behavior. App control is easier but only uses pre-published list from Sophos. Has nifty server "lockdown" option to forbid extra executables.
Symantec Endpoint Protection 1 yr
Cost: $11729.43
Good:
Built for mass expansion (up to millions of clients), best executive reports, best for policies of very large number of enterprise clients, moderately easy setup, fast releases of new versions of SEP, cloud management available, good support (but painful process). Corporate standard for most large enterprises.
Bad:
Management console is slow/clunky due to bad DB backend unless you buy real MS SQL license, local web server, reports aren't most flexible even if they look pretty, high resource consumption for desktops and server, don't try to make work with HyperV, expensive
F-Secure 1yr
Cost: $3520, with email $3760
Good:
Consistently excellent detection rates (on par with Kaspersky), good reputation, RSS feed for notifications, lower resource consumption than average, pretty reports, reasonably priced, mostly used in networks of 100-500 clients,
Bad:
Not as good at anti-phishing detection. Management console is not great. Email alerts are limited, dashboard is not very customizable/sortable/filterable, configuration is complex, DB corruption issues can occur, uninstalling on client can be challenging. Great to awesome product to use as end user, not so great to administer.
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tl;dr version:
Kaspersky and F-secure find the most stuff, but are hard to use. Think autistic genius. Does great job while abrasive as 40 grit sandpaper.
Symantec is expensive and only good if you're a huge company or government entity. Works ok, but built to fit thousand page long standardization process.
Sophos is Apple of AV world. It looks pretty and runs well, but you get what you get, die in a fire if you don't like it or want customization. Not cheap either.
Trend Micro is weird but works ok. Very Japanese brand of weird software. Non-configurable/non-granular stuff, reports are pretty but undetailed, weird uninstall procedures, middle of the road resource consumption.
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Linux has no room to speak about not sucking. Any attempt to say otherwise can be firmly rebutted with one word, systemd.
Which can be countered with one word: Gentoo.
Though ubuntubsd is also looking interesting. Both make systemd optional-to-not-recommended.
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Which can be countered with one word: Gentoo.
Though ubuntubsd is also looking interesting. Both make systemd optional-to-not-recommended.
Did a quick search on systemd-less distros, to include non-linux. PC-BSD/TrueOS based on FreeBSD looks promising.
I still may fall back on Linux Mint, as it was so easy to get rolling when I used it last. I now have the itch to get a linux box going at the house.
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I work at a small ISP and we put Avast and Thunderbird on computers for people all the time. Avast sometimes has issues with Windows 10 but I'd have no hesitation putting it on a Windows 7 machine. Super Antipsypware, Malwarebytes, and ADW Cleaner as needed if something does get on your system. Might be useful if you have kids on it.
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I take back 80% of what I said about Kaspersky. Maybe 90%.
AutoDesk 2017 was indeed technically Kaspersky's fault. Specifically, AutoDesk incorporated a bunch more "licensing", "quality control" and "statistical" monitoring. Basically records MOST friggin actions inside of AutoDesk stuff. And uses Chromium to send them to AutoDesk. Kaspersky saw this as spyware/malware behavior and blocked it. Because, well. It is spyware. Highly recommend to think long and hard before upgrading from Autodesk Product Design Suite 2015 to 2017. We're talking about 1 to 3 Mbps, per workstation, of telemetry data. Even down to movement between cells in BOL. That you can't disable or block.
Remote site issues, local sysadmin didn't add exclusions for his Oracle DBs. Or HyperV. Or AD. Or SQL. In fairness, Kaspersky essentially says "You Really Really want to click the box to add the standard MS exclusions" during initial config. If you shove your hand into a blender after the blender specifically tells you not to do so, it's not exactly the blender's fault. And not excluding your weirdo aftermarket DBs is ... uh. Wow.
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I take back 80% of what I said about Kaspersky. Maybe 90%.
AutoDesk 2017 was indeed technically Kaspersky's fault. Specifically, AutoDesk incorporated a bunch more "licensing", "quality control" and "statistical" monitoring. Basically records MOST friggin actions inside of AutoDesk stuff. And uses Chromium to send them to AutoDesk. Kaspersky saw this as spyware/malware behavior and blocked it. Because, well. It is spyware. Highly recommend to think long and hard before upgrading from Autodesk Product Design Suite 2015 to 2017. We're talking about 1 to 3 Mbps, per workstation, of telemetry data. Even down to movement between cells in BOL. That you can't disable or block.
Remote site issues, local sysadmin didn't add exclusions for his Oracle DBs. Or HyperV. Or AD. Or SQL. In fairness, Kaspersky essentially says "You Really Really want to click the box to add the standard MS exclusions" during initial config. If you shove your hand into a blender after the blender specifically tells you not to do so, it's not exactly the blender's fault. And not excluding your weirdo aftermarket DBs is ... uh. Wow.
I've got one client running Autodesk. I hate that program with a passion. Running on 6 PCs, and not one was able to get a non corrupted install from their official media. Installing the demo, then upgrading from there was the only way I could get it running. You'd think for the price of it, they would've ironed out installation bugs. That's good to know about 2017, I'll make sure to pass that along. With that said, it does play well with Eset. That tends to be my first choice with paid solutions. Detection rates are good. Its fairly light on system resources, and I've yet to see any behavioral oddities from it.
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I've got one client running Autodesk. I hate that program with a passion. Running on 6 PCs, and not one was able to get a non corrupted install from their official media. Installing the demo, then upgrading from there was the only way I could get it running. You'd think for the price of it, they would've ironed out installation bugs. That's good to know about 2017, I'll make sure to pass that along. With that said, it does play well with Eset. That tends to be my first choice with paid solutions. Detection rates are good. Its fairly light on system resources, and I've yet to see any behavioral oddities from it.
Gets even more entertaining when you set up a testing environment that is absolutely perfect and took you a solid week to get perfect. And somehow the bugs after go live were not present in said testing environment. Even though it was spot on. Unless the engineers misrepresented the amount and depth of testing. But engineers would never go live without thorough testing, so that's impossible.
;/
Said bugs were of course my fault. Not the fault of inadequate testing.
Oh, and because I was sorting out THAT issue I was not sorting out a different remote access issue. Because the hardware solution we told them not to buy, and they bought expressly against our recommendation, is having problems. And the head of engineering won't tell his engineer who lives 10 minutes down the road that he has to do his OT hours physically at work. Mind you, for a couple days until we get this sorted. Engineer is hourly. I am not. Head of engineering has no problem with 'ordering' me to be on site after hours. That would be a third issue I am probably most furious with that will be addressed.
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My favorites are the un-tested installers where the developer said "it worked on my machine"
Sure.. once I install visual studio, SOAP, grant all kinds of admin rights to individual users, manually change a couple of registry entries, and downgrade to a specific service pack level of office 2010 it works on the rest of the clients too.
This happened last week.
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Installed Bitdefender Family Pack (http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/family-pack.html) trial version on desktop and my android phone. No great drama. Desktop trial 30 days, android trial 14 days. Will see how intrusive.
Tried installing on the android phone my FIL got for my son, but no love due to PITA Playstore shenanigans. WIll try again. Also will try on an android tablet and hopefully I will succeed enough to get the AV app and Parental app going.
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Installed Bitdefender Family Pack (http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/family-pack.html) trial version on desktop and my android phone. No great drama. Desktop trial 30 days, android trial 14 days. Will see how intrusive.
Tried installing on the android phone my FIL got for my son, but no love due to PITA Playstore shenanigans. WIll try again. Also will try on an android tablet and hopefully I will succeed enough to get the AV app and Parental app going.
How are the ads? I wonder if ad hits are different between free and trial versions?
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How are the ads? I wonder if ad hits are different between free and trial versions?
Don't think I have seen an ad yet on either platform. I suspect the "trial" version is just the pay version that expires in 14/30 days without a license.
Will keep an eye out.
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Thread necromancy.
Probably this weekend migrating from Kaspersky to Sophos. I'm very not happy, but I didn't argue against it. Kaspersky Endpoint Security was rock solid whenever dialed in. Overhead isn't too horrible considering NOTHING got past it. In fairness, part of that was good training we gave to users. In three years, we got two malware samples (unopened) that we had to send to Kaspersky. Generally sorted within an hour or two.
It's solely the amount of configuration necessary to dial in that annoyed the CIO to the point where he said "We're switching. Find something else." I don't blame him. At all. Just because Kaspersky stopped every malware the world threw at us didn't excuse the impact on production during the Win10 and AutoDesk 2017 deployments.
Literally with Kaspersky, my malware concern was "nottin', carry the nottin', divide by nottin'". Sure, once every couple years, it was a nightmare to fuss with the config but the support was excellent.
Now... I'm still on the hoof if something bad happens but literally there's nothing I can do but depend on a vendor. Only F-Secure is on the same level as Kaspersky, but they're even WORSE on the configuration end. Sophos is also "cloud managed", which is on par with driving a sports car with the trunk filled with unstabilized nitroglycerin. If you don't hit anything and odds are low that you would, it's awesome. However, when the low probability event actually occurs, you're in a world of hurt. Kaspersky was like a T-72. Runs over fascist malware all day long, but every 18 months you have to beat on the engine with a wrench because Microsoft or AutoDesk randomly filled the tank with lightly preowned water instead of diesel. After enough vodka and sullen rage, it'd calm down until the next Microsoft 'surprise'.
I'll continue to run Kaspersky at home because I can deal with the annoyances as a tradeoff for the fact that no one has continuously outperformed them. Plus they're the only AV company that I've never heard of cooperating with government entities. They're still massively screwing up by expanding their functionality range to meet edge/niche customers at the expense of simplicity and ease of operation. This was and is a mistake.
Everything has confirmed my opinion of Sophos. It's good enough but not great, and it is indeed a champion of the Apple way of thought. It's almost insulting simple and if it doesn't fit your needs, kindly die in a fire. Now give us money. But it thankfully does (currently) fit our needs and it's not a bad design. They provide good, rather than furious avenging deity level, protection. Not hideously overpriced. Thankfully, mostly no Cult like devotion.
Side-note, we'll probably continue to use Kaspersky for email scanning on the Exchange server. It's old school, almost neglected product (the software is neglected, not the virus definitions) which is excellent news. Very low amount of configuration, just works, good performance and crushes malware like a T-72 running over a counterrevolutionary chicken. Very little badly and annoyingly implemented feature bloat. Probably good idea to have two very different antivirus products anyways.
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On the home user (meaning poor and cheap) side, I've had more and more friends switch from Avast! and AVG to Avira. Haven't looked at it yet myself, so can't comment.
I notice that when this thread was new-ish somebody mention using Avast! and Thunderbird. That was the combination that led me to dump Avast! on my primary desktop computer: it screwed with my Thunderbird, so it had to go. I tried both Bitdefender and AVG. Didn't particularly care for either, but AVG won out because it's slightly less annoying.
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I'm still using MSE without any problems, but my ISP, Charter Spectrum, has some kind of security suite (had to type that word 3 times because my fingers kept doing "quite") that home customers can install on 10 computers for free. I should check it out; at least see what they have.
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Bitdefender is the only free AV I use for my clients. Avira is OK; but the pop ups get annoying, and their detection rate varies. Security Essentials is pretty much a lost cause.
Yeah, I feel cheated about that. Although the Win7 64-bit came with my laptop, with MSE "protection," I think there was an implied guarantee there. I operated on the assumption that MS best knew how to protect their own products. Silly me.
Gr.
I recognize the difficulty of dealing with all the virus variations, but I still think MSE should be at the forefront in terms of virus and spyware defense of their own operating systems.
Double-Gr.
Snarl.
Double-snarl.
Terry
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From what I can tell online, charter security suite is a repackaged (and group licensed) F-Secure antivirus. Anybody heard of it? Isit better than MSE?
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Yeah, I feel cheated about that. Although the Win7 64-bit came with my laptop, with MSE "protection," I think there was an implied guarantee there. I operated on the assumption that MS best knew how to protect their own products. Silly me.
Gr.
I recognize the difficulty of dealing with all the virus variations, but I still think MSE should be at the forefront in terms of virus and spyware defense of their own operating systems.
Double-Gr.
Snarl.
Double-snarl.
Terry
If that was really the case, then there wouldn't be a huge market for AV.
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Yeah, I feel cheated about that. Although the Win7 64-bit came with my laptop, with MSE "protection," I think there was an implied guarantee there. I operated on the assumption that MS best knew how to protect their own products. Silly me.
Gr.
I recognize the difficulty of dealing with all the virus variations, but I still think MSE should be at the forefront in terms of virus and spyware defense of their own operating systems.
Double-Gr.
Snarl.
Double-snarl.
Terry
When it first came out, people were surprised by how good it was. Like any other product, it faced competition. Other stuff is better now. Shrug.
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If that was really the case, then there wouldn't be a huge market for AV.
When it first came out, people were surprised by how good it was. Like any other product, it faced competition. Other stuff is better now. Shrug.
But with their enormous resources...
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Yeah, I feel cheated about that. Although the Win7 64-bit came with my laptop, with MSE "protection," I think there was an implied guarantee there. I operated on the assumption that MS best knew how to protect their own products. Silly me.
I recognize the difficulty of dealing with all the virus variations, but I still think MSE should be at the forefront in terms of virus and spyware defense of their own operating systems.
Kinda like how virtually all car companies just buy audio components from other manufacturers. Despite how many they install, and you'd think car companies would be on the forefront of audio for their own cars.
Different skillsets and knowledge base.