REAL AntiVirus Advice
I absolutely agree w/ the above post that this article was horrible. Anyone with enterprise experience will know this, but unfortunately some of the less experienced out there will not. He does not even mention Trend or Panda - enough evidence, let's move on. So here is the advice for the admins that need it.
1)Determine your needs. Look at antivirus best practices. Most recommend 3 tiers of antivirus. It should be at the gateway, mail servers, and all workstations and servers. Which platforms do you need to support? Now figure out the criteria you'll use to evaluate the product on based upon your needs, e.g. support, cost, performance.
2)Research products. Consider at least Trend, Symantec, Panda, Sophos, and McAfee (in that order). Read reviews from reputable sources. Always consider the source of the information. Other than this post =) how can you listen to one poster who says that Norton doesn't work, when they've got such huge market share (to that poster, you can configure the CPU utilization for the scan). One product is NOT the best for everyone. Please don't fall into this common IT trap. You need to do the research to find the one best for you. Go look at sources like PC Magazine (pcmag.com). I've used most of these products, and even though I personally don't like McAfee, if it's configured correctly, any of these products can do a reasonable job for an all Windows network.
3)Aquire and Execute. Before you implement, RTFM. Your IT infrastructure is at stake. Do realtime scans on files and email attachments. Have your AV server get definition on a nightly basis (but manually update if serious outbreak). Have your AV clients sync at least as often (same on manual update). Do enterprise wide scan on a weekly basis. W/out management software, an easy way to do this is to simply have a policy to leave systems on every Thursday night. If you find this doesn't work bc of users not adhering, do scans w/ low CPU priority during the day on Friday starting around lunch.
4)Followup. Manually check that systems are working correctly on a monthly basis. Implement appropriate backup of AV servers. Determine recovery plan, etc.
W/ all of this, you will hopefully have a good AV plan. Don't forget that most of these products don't handly spyware. That's your next item to tackle. =)
