Vipre Enterprise

In the past couple of days, I have received quite a few different IT magazines in the mail.  I have seen a few advertisements for Vipre Enterprise.  It brags to be an "all-in-one anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit solution without hogging resources."  If this solution works as advertised, it could change the landscape of AV.  Has anyone tried this?   

I don't think it can change the landscape of AV.  In my opinion, the only thing that will do that is the operating system(s).  I use NOD32 these days, its very lightweight and claims to do all this claims to - and they've been around for years.

User behavior will determine exposure to malicious threats more than any protection software will.  I used a system at home for over 2 years with no AV solution installed at all and (as far as I know) never got infected.  I don't get warned of infections in the office, either - and I use a variety of systems to protect us and spot check the logs.

Good God, no Gary!  Its done by Sunbelt...  Ruuuuuuuuun!!!!!

I vote that someone rolls Vipre out in their organization so the forum can get a good first-hand, real-world account :-)

I was looking at Vipre last spring, but (as far as I could tell) they didn't have an Enterprise product at that point. It sounds good, but there wasn't really any non-marketing information about it out there yet. All I ever found were anecdotal accounts of Vipre missing this or that virus/trojan/worm (like this forum post).

On to the point...
Chris's comment about about behavior reminded me of EvilNetworkOverlord's recent comment that no antivirus solution is more that 80-90% effective:

One of my on-going projects involves the weekly downloading of hundreds of infected files. I do nothing with them except scan them every night for malware.  No matter what product I use, it's amazing how many Trojans and worms go undetected for days or even weeks.

I guess it's better to just use the lightest (least resource-heavy) antivirus available, as long as it provides a basic level of protection.

It's easy to get caught up trying to find the best antivirus, but even the best ones can leave you wide open (and ENO's numbers similar to those of other 3rd-party testers)

So the real question is: how can we affect user behaviour? I get a queasy feeling whenever I have to clean malware off a PC that's used to process (somewhat) sensitive info.

You make a reasonable request, maybe ENO would be kind enough to add Vipre to his lab.  However, since it's done by Sunbelt, I'm pretty much going to ignore it completely unless ENO says its a good product. 

Do you remember that awesome Kerio Personal Firewall that came out awhile ago?  It used to bundle with AVG7 free.  And the personal edition was pretty good, even better than Windows Firewall (also good for 2000 users), and not nearly as resource hoggy as ZoneAlarm and others.  Well, Sunbelt acquired it and ruined everything.  I'm not surprised that all we can find on their website is marketing information.  As I recall, that's mostly what they do - buy and market other people's software instead of making their own.  Boo to Sunbelt.

I've heard of Sunbelt, but I haven't heard much about them.  In looking at their software offerings, it doesn't look like they have much out there yet.  Chris, I noticed that Nod32 brags about having less bloat as well.  I agree that AV products are not 100% nor will they ever be 100% effective.  I may give it a whirl in a test environment.  I won't roll it out in our live network. 

Steve Bass (PC World) gave Vipre a mildly positive mention in his TechBite newsletter a few months ago. But he didn't give any details and I haven't had time to play with it.

When the final version of MS Security Essentials is released (soon?) I might do some sort of limited comparison test.  If so, I'll add Vipre to the list.

-ENO

Thanks ENO - that's generous of you to do so.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the input.

I tried several products on several PCs I had through the years.

I'm now with Avast! home edition v4.8, which seems to do the trick for the most part.

I also have been using for a while now an addition that's called 'threatfire v4.5'

This, as far as I know is the newer approach to AVs. It tries to not count on an extensive DB of known malware, but rather monitors the behavior of different codes and tries to decide if it a good-code or mal-code. If it determines that it is mal-code, it will stop it and popup a window for you to decide what to do (remember/ not - an option).

So far it seem to have been of use with few false positives.

-The approach is now developed to overcome two main problems: (1) Taxing the RAM, (2) Zero alert infection.

-Now I'm more afraid from rootkit malware. Don't really know if there's a good way to prevent infection on that level.

Let me know what you think,

An unemployed physicist.