How to choose an internet security suite for a small company

grey_area

I've done a quick search here on internet security and found a few old threads about what was best whenever back in the day, but nothing on this topic specifically.

I have been asked to find an internet security suite for the company I work for. The part where I work consists of three people, possibly four computers and a server.

I'm definitely a newbie to this game - I have set-up and run anti-virus software on my home computers, and that is pretty much it. What I don't know is how to go about choosing, testing, etc. the options that are out there.

Does anyone have a simple methodology? Are the top contenders more or less the same? I don't necessarily want a "use Product X, it kicks ass" answer, more like how do I prove to my boss that Product X is indeed violent towards donkeys.

Currently I'm writing to the local resellers of McAffee, BitDefender, Symantec, Kaspersky and ESET for prices and offers of what support they can provide (because when I asked other people and checked out some reviews those names popped up at the top). Once I have that I still have no idea how their software will perform on our, admittedly odd and mismatched, network. I'm rapidly getting out of my depth here, and more than a little bamboozled...

cheers!

Tushon

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

What do you have between you and the internet right now?

kryyst

You can run Microsoft Security Essentials on the computers legally for free and I'd also recommend threatfire free as well.

On the server you either need to pay for server class security suite or you could run clamwin and schedule it to run daily scans.

grey_area

Right now I'm using MSE for my home computer and I'm trialling ESET on my work laptop. So far nothing has attacked either, but I do make sure to keep my personal travels to my home pc. The daily scans thing is what interests me the most, since we all have laptops, and none of them are the same make or model or anything. I don't even know what the other guys are using for an AV. I have a meeting in a week and can discuss all this with my boss then.

I'm actually considering suggesting we take a significant part of our work and outsource the server requirements, since then the backing up and maintenance and all that jazz becomes someone else's problem. Only thing is that they need good physical security since we need to stick a $100,000 dongle on the back of a box. Either that or that box stays with us and we take ownership but outsource everything else. Thoughts on outsourcing and cloud basing file management etc? I know we'd still need our own AV and stuff, but that could be much simpler compared to trying to build and run network.

PirateNinja

Well if you throwing a 100k dongle in the mix things get complicated. You have to consider that most data centers have great physical security, but just taking a usb dongle out of a server would be something a lot of techs might mistakenly do .. "What's this doing in here?"

I'd get in touch with @RyanMM for some professional consulting so you can explain the dongle and it's purpose and he can use his business and IT knowledge to get you an ideal setup. It's the type of thing that frankly requires some consulting from a pro if you have that much at risk. He would likely set you up with a great backup / cloud sourced solution and hopefully find a way to ditch the dongle.

grey_area

Yup, I've been thinking of pushing to get a consultant in. We are in Switzerland though, so I'd have to go through someone local who can speak either French or German (unless RyanMM can do that too?).

It got a little more complicated than I thought. All I did was ask if we had a corporate AV when I was handed my new laptop that just had the trial version of Norton installed on it! No, they said, what would I recommend? And the spiral down started there!

I think you are right though, this is too complicated for a company with currently three people to manage. I'll be (trying to) get outside help as soon as I can!