Recommendations for small business antivirus?

[JavaJones]

Hi all, I know there are some folks here who have IT consultancies or manage corporate IT infrastructures themselves. I'm hoping for some good advice on antivirus/security software for a small-to-medium sized business.

Currently we use Kaspersky, which we've had for the last 3 years. In that time the client software has been upgraded fairly minimally by Kaspersky while the desktop client has jumped something like 4 versions (somewhat standard for enterprise clients I understand). It has generally been more of a resource hog than we'd like, it's finicky in its settings, and does have a higher-than-desirable false positive rate. We've also had some malware/viruses make it through since using it (admittedly the fault of the user to some degree, but still). The pricing and protection level at the time we purchased seemed like the best, but now we're hoping things may have changed.

We're looking for a product with a high level of security (obviously), but hopefully with a low false positive rate. Additionally and importantly, it should have low resource use; this has been a source of major frustration with Kaspersky over the years. We also really just need it to have antivirus and antispyware and other malware (trojans, etc.) protection. We don't need firewall, antispam, instant messaging protection, p2p, etc, etc. We handle all that through our gateway and/or other systems like Google Apps (spam). We also need central management of the clients. We have approximately 30 desktops as well as up to 4 Windows servers (VMs) that need to be covered. Desktop OS is a mix of Win XP (about 60%) and Windows 7 with a very few Vista clients.

We're an educational and non-profit customer, so we can get some discounts. Pricing is important but far from a key factor.

So far we've had Norman Endpoint Protection recommended by one vendor and Symantec Endpoint Protection by another (CDWG). Benchmarks show mixed results for either of those as well as other options:
http://www.av-compar...ormance_dec_2010.pdf
http://www.passmark....esting%20-%20SMB.pdf
Symantec does seem to do pretty well, but then so does Kaspersky! I'm really hopeful that Kaspersky isn't the best we can get...

Any and all recommendations, advise, and experience appreciated!

- Oshyan

[Bamse]

Have no clue but if interested in alternatives you could contact PrevX. They seem to be very friendly towards business users, from reading on their forum http://www.wildersse...rumdisplay.php?f=105 You can probably get a test run for free. Has almost nothing to do wtih Kaspersky or Symantec, not any other AV actually

Note that they have been bought by Webroot but of course every consumer will benefit and all that. They are also close to releasing a new version = may be not the best time to sign up. A bit pricy but different and because the way it works there is no lighter solution. I have tried full version on local desktop and it is great once you accept it, heh. One thing to be aware of is the cloud based detection which CAN be very annoying. If you install something that is unknown installation time can increase with 1-2 minutes. Besides that it is not likely to bother you, kind of the point with PrevX.

But check that forum, here is one of the relevant posts http://www.wildersse...p;highlight=business

[JavaJones]

Cool, thanks. That's definitely a different direction, worth thinking about.

- Oshyan