As you are probably aware, technology within the IT sector moves at a very rapid pace.
A new anti-virus product that is released today is old news in 6 months.
It is virtually impossible to keep up to date, and financially it is just not viable either.
You have to make an informed decision on what technologies are available today and what your IT budget limitations are.
There are always going to be compromises due to budget constraints.
The latest and greatest piece of software or hardware doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go out and buy them.
Before you even start looking at software that protects you from viruses, you need to make an informed decision on your requirements.
Let's take a look at what those requirements could be for an anti virus solution for your network.
The obvious and main item on the list is that it needs to be able to scan for viruses and essentially stop viruses from entering your network and also clean any existing viruses on your network.
You have to break this down further because just about any anti virus software can just about do that, even the free versions out there.
I like to look at an anti virus solution as a 3 tier system on a company network.
Tier one are your laptops, desktops, and servers which all need a local installation and will scan the local files and folders, registry, etc.
for virus.
The second tier is to protect your internal network by detecting and stopping viruses from spreading.
The third tier is to stop viruses from entering your network from an external source.
If a virus somehow gets through your third tier, it should be stopped by your second tier.
If it gets through the second tier, then the computers should quarantine the virus and stop it from spreading to other machines.
Essentially you are creating safety nets on your network so that if one of them fails, the others are there catch the virus.
The latest Anti virus software can now come with multiple scanning engines.
This means that if you only had one scanning engine and that particular scanning engine wasn't aware of the virus, you would get infected.
If you had two, or as many as five different scanning engines, one of them is bound to detect the virus and quarantine the infection.
Each engine is developed by a different software developer and has its own update DAT file.
It is like having five different anti-virus software installations under one product.
A DAT file is the update that each engine receives so it knows what new viruses, trojans and signatures to look out for.
It is essential that you have software that protects your email server's local files and folders and that it also scans for viruses within email messages and any associated attachments.
Just because the software scans the local server operating system, registry and files, doesn't mean that it scans email messages too.
Either two different pieces of software will need to be installed onto the local server or one piece of software can do both jobs.
This would depend on your budget, but I would go for one software package for email servers as it is easier to administer.
Stopping viruses from entering the network can come in the form of a hardened firewall at the perimeter network that stops any external un-trusted traffic from entering the network.
They don't scan for viruses, but because they keep all unknown traffic out of your network, Trojans and viruses won't get a chance to enter your network.