[Gloucs] Anti-virus and spyware checking for windows clients?

[Keith Edmunds]

On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:10:59 +0000, russellh at ysmail.net said:

> anyone got some guidance for anti-virus and spyware checking that I can
> implement on my CentOS server, before the emails hit my windows client
> PC's?  CLAM A/V springs to mind, but I've never implemented it before?

ClamAV is very good in my experience, and not hard to use. You don't say
exactly how you intend to use it - is there an email server that the mail
in question passes through? If so, which MTA are you running?

> Is there any certainty that I could kill off local A/V and Spyware
> checkers on the windows clients if I had a full suite on the email/web
> gateway, or am I committed to having background processes running
> *everywhere* !??!

Of course you can kill it off, but I wouldn't for two reasons. Firstly,
having two different virus scanners is simply a sensible precaution,
especially given the havoc they can wreak. More importantly, not all
viruses arrive by email: some are brought in on USB sticks and the like.
 
> It just seems like I'm stuck on a processor and memory upgrade cycle for
> my windows clients....

Windows is a pretty common choice for a desktop platform, but depending
upon exactly what you - or your users - need to achieve, there might be
better alternatives. For example, I have never heard a regular Mac user
complain about the Mac. For many users, though, email / web / word
processing / spreadsheet covers >95% of what they need to do (and 100% for
a lot of them), in which case a Linux PC makes a lot of sense. Don't use
Windows just because "everyone else does" or "we always have" or "users
don't want to use anything else". Use Windows because it is the best
solution from a productivity and financial perspective (pretty much the
same thing), and if it isn't the best solution then use whatever is.

Keith
-- 
Keith Edmunds

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