Forefront AV

York · 19 Mar 2010 at 17:10

Currently looking at options for Anti-Virus as our renewal is coming up towards the end of the year. As part of our MS licensing agreement we have the Enterprise CAL pack which includes the Forefront protection suite.

One of it's components is Forefront Client Protection, the MS client AV for enterprise. I was just wondering if anyone was/is using it and what your thoughts were on it and how easy it was to manage?

Sp00n · 19 Mar 2010 at 17:58

I will be changing 2 clients over to forefront next week, I have no idea about it though (gotta love my company) so I will report back when I've actually installed and looked at it!

paradigm · 19 Mar 2010 at 18:31

I'm also meant to be deploying this within the next month or so.

brainchylde · 19 Mar 2010 at 19:58

I'm just glad ur not going for CA. Eugh!

Lanz · 19 Mar 2010 at 20:32

Forefront is powered by kaspersky tech, which is pretty good for desktops, but KAV is rubbish for servers, we've had nothing but trouble with it.

So maybe Forefront for your clients and get something more proven for your servers.

Ace T · 19 Mar 2010 at 20:38

Its clearly not an Enterprise player but more the SMB market I think. We use Symantec Endpoint Protection and its very good compared to earlier versions of Symantec AV.

RSR · 20 Mar 2010 at 13:51

Ace T said:
Its clearly not an Enterprise player but more the SMB market I think. We use Symantec Endpoint Protection and its very good compared to earlier versions of Symantec AV.

No just no..... Ive found Symantec Endpoint to be complete bloated av package and ive found Sophos much better.

paradigm · 20 Mar 2010 at 13:53

andyd said:
No just no..... Ive found Symantec Endpoint to be complete bloated av package and ive found Sophos much better.

I agree that Symantec Endpoint is far too bloated for its own good, however Sophos, whist a nice package, is a particularly crap AV engine, and either flags up lots of false positives, or misses important infections.

York · 20 Mar 2010 at 13:57

AV is one of those areas that it seems most people have had a bad experience with at least one AV package

.

Personally I'm not a fan of Symantec or Sophos. I'm not overly keen of McAfee either (our current AV). Be interesting to see how those of you get on with deploying Forefront. Planning on running it on our test domain for a few weeks to see how we get on with it

J.B · 20 Mar 2010 at 15:01

We use Sophos on our servers and it does seem to flag up a few false positives on our file server.

Hadnt heard anything about it having a poor AV engine...ooops

Baz · 20 Mar 2010 at 19:17

Had forefront in for a few months now, bit tricky to set up, but the footprint is tiny for the desktops and works a treat, not had any problems with the servers either.

Sp00n · 20 Mar 2010 at 20:32

Why was it tricky to setup?

Baz · 20 Mar 2010 at 21:12

I didn't set it up, we had a consultant in, took him a while.

WSUS has to be set up first and configured, policies set etc, then set up the GP's etc.

DustyMiller · 21 Mar 2010 at 15:30

andyd said:
No just no..... Ive found Symantec Endpoint to be complete bloated av package and ive found Sophos much better.

This man speaketh the truth. sophos is soo much much nicer, and has the best AD intergration of any of the products out there.

I have just got rid of Symantec, in favour of SOPHOS. And am now going the whole hog with Sophos SafeGuard.

Sp00n · 22 Mar 2010 at 08:07

WSUS is a pre-req for forefront to work? seriously wow :/

Baz · 22 Mar 2010 at 08:10

Sp00n said:
WSUS is a pre-req for forefront to work? seriously wow :/

Pretty much, it installs MOM as well I think.

Makes sense though, as making sure the clients have security and critical updates is almost as important as making sure the AV is up to date.

Sp00n · 23 Mar 2010 at 14:40

Oh my god, this is a joke.

Not only is wsus a pre-req, so is SQL, are you KIDDING ME?

It's just far too involved and "complicated" for something so basic.

Baz · 23 Mar 2010 at 14:41

Sp00n said:
Oh my god, this is a joke.

Not only is wsus a pre-req, so is SQL, are you KIDDING ME?

It's just far too involved and "complicated" for something so basic.

True, it can be a pain to install as well, I don't think that part is user friendly at all, but the client side is.

Scooter72 · 23 Mar 2010 at 16:23

lots of prereqs for Forefront, WSUS as mentioned and also it must be full SQL not express. The client side is nice but management is pretty rubbish.

Good AV engine - its not Kasperksy - but an Enterprise product its not

Sp00n · 23 Mar 2010 at 16:34

I'm still trying to install this, just realised that it needs to be sql standard not express.

Christ my job is a joke, I get half a day to learn and install a product not to mention answer the phone + any emails that come through.

I say... forefront is crap and way too complicated for what it is, stick with something that has its own internal database and doesnt integrate with WSUS.