Content

McAfee Active Virus Defense

Not all users want to resort to single user products to protect their SME business systems, and often the corporate editions are just not geared to the smaller business model. But McAfee Active Virus Defense Small Business Edition offers the level of security required for the SME market without compromising on any vital areas of virus protection. It delivers a suite of products that enables the SMEs amongst us to manage, update, and police our systems before any damage is done.

Installation, although well documented, may take a little longer than some of the other solutions if you decide to deploy the whole suite. But you really do get a complete solution to enable policies to be set, as well as your normal detection, scanning and disinfection. For the larger SME, the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator will help you roll out and manage your protection. Support is also good and there is a wealth of information on offer from their web site.

The GUI provides a well designed and easy to use road map for the administrator. At the workstation end, users will benefit from regular updates and a virus-free ­ environment in which to work. It looks and feels good and was easy enough to install.

McAfee Security has been a regular contender in SC's annual review of anti-virus solutions and has a proven track record, so it is maybe not so surprising to find it sailing through Test 1 with a return of 100 percent, or that Test 2 proved no more of a challenge, with Active Virus Defense repeating a perfect score.

The polymorphic Test 3, with 1,012 listed varieties, could not hamper the solution either and it managed yet another 100 percent. In our fourth test, where we used a variety of second division viruses, some of the other solutions faltered but Active Virus Defense did not. It continued to prove its worth in Test 5 against the macros.

Scoring perfectly across the board is no mean feat with so many viruses and variants but it did this, and had one of the fastest returns in our speed test, taking just 2.5 seconds to scan a directory of clean files. The solution once again proved successful and deserving of its 'best of breed' label.

Product title
McAfee Active Virus Defense
Product info
Name: McAfee Active Virus Defense (Anti-Virus group test) Description: Price: $50 per node (100 nodes)
Strength
Great results, easy to maintain, a quality anti-virus solution.
Weakness
Nothing.
Verdict
Brilliant results with a well-designed package suitable for the larger SME environment.

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