AV/Security guys: which is best centrally managed AV product?
 

I'm in charge of picking out a new AV product at work. We currently use Symantec Endpoint Protection and it's fucking terrible. It's flat out bloatware and I hate it.

Any good recommendations on a centrally managed AV product? It's really hard to find reviews for this type of thing on the Internet. It's all wishy washy BS instead of actual reviews.

Requirements: centrally managed on a server, can install clients remotely, ***MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE CAN BE INSTALLED ON ANY WORKSTATION, like actual software, not web-based bullcrap***, has anti virus/antispyware/anti rootkit/antiwhatever all built in together, doesn't hog system resources, active directory integration would be great

This is for around 500 PCs. Any advice is appreciated, thanks!!!!!!!!

My organization is currently using AVG Business Edition 2011 and I found it to be much more stable that Symantec Endpoint Protection. I found the central management software to be an improvement over Symantec endpoint protection management software; it takes less time building antivirus reports, viewing computers and provides information on each computer. It is easy to use and is capable of using Active Directory for you to install on specific computers.

My users barely notice the avg client on their computer unlike symantec endpoint client, which would slow down a computer and prevent them from doing their work. The avg client uses about 7 mb of memory, which is great compared to the 75mb symantec would use.

We had Endpoint Protection for a while at our corp (500,000 employees) but it was absolutely wretched. They moved to McAfee Enterprise and it's considerably less bloatware. After deployment it runs a relatively small Enterprise Agent that does all of the AV activity pretty well. I use Avast at home but I can't speak for its deployability/maintainability.

I've used Vipre at various places and it does what you need it to do. I don't know about AD support as I've never had to tie in a AV into AD. System wise, I've got it installed on my machine here at work and I'll watch the system resources during idle/scan times and report back to you.

Thanks for the suggestions. Has anyone dealt with Ad-Aware Business Edition? Their pricing is great and it has superb reviews from PCMag.