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Hi

We currently use Kaspersky across 70 workstations and 8 servers.

While it works and it’s what I’ve been trained in, it is approx. £300 more expensive per annum than ESET. I don’t have much experience with ESET and have arranged for a trial.

My main issue with Kaspersky is the price and the Admin Kit which I find “fiddly.” I’ve used it for about 4 years and I have never been 100% happy using it. I like the idea of ESET not having a “Server” and “Workstation” edition too - one size fits all!

I just wondered who of you were using Kaspersky or ESET and your views of it… really just down to which one you think is better overall. I read ESET are now top of the “detections” list?

Cheers.

5 Spice ups
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We installed ESET here a few months ago. I really like the product. I was able to make myself a custom installer to either push out to my clients or run manually at each station as needed. Be aware that there are a lot of settings when you get under the hood, but that you will not need to touch many of them. ESET’s footprint is what drew me to them as well as their scanning reputation. Updates are pushed out very fast and scanning is very quick and computers feel like they all got upgraded (we had symantec before…)

I suggest giving the trial a, um, trial and see how it goes. Although it was a bit tricky at first for me, once I got it up and running it has been a breeze.

3

Hi

I worked a year with KAV 6 and most of our clients switched to ESET in the past year or so.

First of all, I don’t want to be biased so I use this site for info:

http://av-comparatives.org/

As for KAV, from my experience, it catches more threats but at a cost. It plugs into every system you have and the impact on performance is significant.

NOD32 is lighter and has faster scans. It is configured with XML file and distributed via login script. Of course, you can do tasks from central management console at the server.

The current NOD32 version is 4 and it appears to be quite “heavy” on the desktops. If you have exchange server, you will need the old 2.7 version since the new versions do not support exchange yet.

What is great about ESET is their support, at least in our country. It is quick and they connect to the problematic servers and sort out the issue along with you, instead of giving you the run around with logs, configurations, errors, etc.

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BarthomueJ,

Obviously, my vote is for ESET. :slight_smile: Having said that, I encourage you to evaluate for your self and make sure that any product you use actually fits your needs.

If you would like some independent evaluations, as VitalyP posted above, AV-Comparitives is a great third party, independent evaluator. Others you may want to take a look at are West Coast Labs, and the Virus Bulletin. Spoiler We do pretty well in all of the above tests. Also, we are very highly ranked right here. Where users just like come to talk about all things IT. If you look at the rankings, I think you’ll find that no other AV vendor has as a 5 star ranking AND over 100 reviews. In fact, all of the other vendors that have 5 stars have less than 20 reviews total.

As Andrew Lub pointed out above, you can push your install of NOD32 Business Edition out to all of your clients using our remote console. You do not need to use our 2.7 version to cover Exchange, as we have an Exchange product as well that you can manage from the console.

@VitalyP, I find it strangee that you are experiencing “heavy” on the desktop and would like to understand that better. The most I have seen a client use for memory is about 50MB and that was a lot. Typically, it is closer to 40MB and that is with the GUI running. With only two process running typically, you should not be seeing much overhead.

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We moved to ESET recently and are very happy with it. We decided to make the switch because of ESET’s involvement here in the community. It’s great working with vendors to whom you can speak at any time whether you have general inquiries, licensing concerns, cost questions or technical issues.

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where I am currently, they are using Kaspersky. I’ve never used it before now and I really dislike it. Have tried to get rid of it a number of times but senior management know better than an IT Manager.

Why do I not like it? Huge load on the machines. If a scan runs, the system grinds to a halt. The central management application is not the most obvious/intuitive. One plus, is that KAV detects a lot, so hats off to KAV for that.

I much prefer ESET. It’s so much quicker at scanning and the load on the machine is minimal. I’ve not had any problems with the application and the updates are regular. This is all based on personal experience with home user(s) and not in a corporate environment.

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We moved to KAV at the begining of the year and got 5 years for the price of 3.

We were running panda and it was missing things so i wanted shot of it and the guys at Kaspersky bought me out of license.

KAV can be a bit keen but compared to Panda it is amazing.

I agree that the Admin Kit is clunky and not intuitive but then i only use it once a month to check up on things - i have set it to report weekly via email.

I have not tried ESET but it seems that there are good things being said.

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We will renew our Eset subscription this year, and I am replacing my home systems with it as well. The small footprint, fast scans, and (knock on wood) the ability to catch almost everything works for me. Formerly used McAfee and CA in the business, but found McAfee difficult to manage, and CA’s reporting to very inaccurate. Both missed viruses that had laid dormant within the network for about 8 years that Eset caught immediately.

Eset’s management console is very intuitive and easy to manage. Pushed installs work great and configuration changes are also easy. Plus, with multiple locations, I reduce network bandwidth by using local mirrored servers for updates. Also, default is to check hourly for updates which our auditors love.

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My business changed from Trendmicro to Eset over a year ago and we have been very happy with Eset. We have used NOD32 and are currently moving to Eset Smart Security. Like AndrewLub we were sold on the small footprint and speed of Eset. The catch rate is excellent also. One shortcoming of Eset is its’ spyware/adware catch rate. But you are going to have this with most other anti-virus packages. You will want to add this into the equation when you decide on a product. WE use a gateway appliance to catch our malware at the office and use malwarebytes for our mobile users. But this is the only shortcoming that I have found. Support has been superb, the management console is excellent and keeps getting better. My systems are so much faster. Excellent product!

Like others have said take a look at av-comparatives.org and other anti-virus evalutation sites. In May av-comparatives reviewed 7 corporate anti-virus packages including Eset and Kaspersky. Take a look here .

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Don@ESET wrote:

@VitalyP, I find it strangee that you are experiencing “heavy” on the desktop and would like to understand that better. The most I have seen a client use for memory is about 50MB and that was a lot. Typically, it is closer to 40MB and that is with the GUI running. With only two process running typically, you should not be seeing much overhead.

Actually I am finding that 50MB is more the norm. On my machine ekrn and egui are currently taking 55MB (XP Pro 32Bit) and on another they are taking 49MB (Vista Business 64Bit). By no means super bloated but definitely not 40MB.

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I switched from Symantec to ESET a couple of months ago and I’m totally loving it. I’m less than half way through migrating from Symantec and ESET and the differences are easily discernable. My slower clients are experiencing better performance overall. Even the deployment is easier than Symantec. Best of all, we saved over $2,000 by switching to ESET.

It took me weeks to learn how to deploy clients in Symantec after persusing the 500+ page manual. The ESET Remote Admin Console (ERAC) is just more straight-forward and easier to use. I didn’t really have to refer to the manual since I just played around with it, created an installable package and deployed it on a few test clients.

Our mobile users will see the most benefit since Symantec Endpoint Protection is a burden on those systems. The install footprint alone is 400 MB. Some of my Symantec clients have 800 MB footprints.

The group policies in ERAC take a few tries to understand and get right, but there are a ton of options in there. For example, for my mobile clients I have two update profiles. If they are offsite where no update servers are available, then they fall back to the Internet for updates.

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I moved us to NOD32 Business Edition 4 from SAV 10.1 about a month ago, right from the start it saved us £400 off our renewal. It was simple to install (took me a day to do which included the removal of SAV 10.1 and install of NOD32).

Haven’t looked back since, it’s really easy to administer, the policies management is an absolute doddle to plan and implement and I’ve had no complaints off my users… also, a couple of our older workstations that would take 15 minutes to be useable after bootup are now readily available after 5 minutes… in your face Symantec! :wink:

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Well this just seems to be turning into an ESET appreciation society.

Looks like we may have a winnner?!?

1 Spice up
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Can’t say anything about ESET, as not used it, but I love Kaspersky. When we switched to it from Symantec about 4 years ago, the performance difference was really noticeable. For those who experience performance issues with Kasperksy don’t forget that there is a setting to force Kaspersky to have lower priority and to release resource to other processes when required.

Also there’s going to be a maintenance pack 4 released in October and a new version 8 targeted for release early next year. New admin kit version 8 will also be released in october, which will have a lot of additional features including a better graphical interface.

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I installed a 5-node version of Kaspersky for a small business and didn’t have any problems with the installation and they haven’t reported anything since then. Although they’ll probably only notice when a BOSD or annual suscription alert appears and it’ll be up to me to sort it.

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After struggling with Symantec Endpoint from version MR2 to MR4, I am still having problems with my file server just stopping. MS knows about and Symantec knows about it and even though each new release supposed to fix it it doesn’t. I tried Kaspersky for 30 days and no problems. Switched to ESET and it had the same problem as Endpoint. This was back in March and April of this year so I am not sure what version that was. Has ESET fixed this problem? And why is ESET not available for purchase on the spicework store?

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Eset prefers to sell through resellers. I use ANI Direct as a VAR for it. They do sell direct to end users from the web site.

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Tien9104 wrote:

After struggling with Symantec Endpoint from version MR2 to MR4, I am still having problems with my file server just stopping. MS knows about and Symantec knows about it and even though each new release supposed to fix it it doesn’t. I tried Kaspersky for 30 days and no problems. Switched to ESET and it had the same problem as Endpoint. This was back in March and April of this year so I am not sure what version that was. Has ESET fixed this problem? And why is ESET not available for purchase on the spicework store?

I had this issue with NOD32 v3 and had to roll back to v2.7 on my file servers. I haven’t tried v4. v2.7 has been working for about 2 years without any issues.

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Lots of improvements in v4 that you are missing. Anti-Spyware functions are included and scanning is also improved. There were problems with v3 and there was never even a v3 Business Edition, but version 4 is much better in regards to pushing configurations, installs, monitoring, etc. Another helpful item is the Server Administration Console and NOD32 shows the condition of MS updates. If a machine is not patched, the icon glows orange and a special column in the console shows the update status of the machine. Well worth the trouble to install.

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How long has v4 been out? How long have you had it running in production? Because the problem sometime take weeks to surface. oki dokes… I’ll give it another shot… now if only the sales rep only get back to me…