scanners I have picked?

[Nathan Johanson]

Ryan,
 
I have made a few discoveries over the last few weeks since originally
posting the antivirus review...
 
F-Secure is does not do per server licensing. See my followup post
below. Another user emailed to tell me that the license agreement does
in fact stipulate a per user license when using the product to scan
email. Due to the ambiguity noted below and cheaper costs elsewhere, I
decided against F-Secure. 
 
As for McAfee, I called NAI directly and also talked to one of their
resellers. In both cases, they assured me that VirusScan for Unix (aka
Command LIne) is licensed per machine. I received a quote from a local
reseller in California for a ridiculously small sum of money. I also
downloaded their license agreement (available on their web site) and
wasn't able to ascertain one way or the other how it is "actually"
licensed. Shortly after posting my review, several people emailed to
tell me that they heard exactly the opposite from NAI (or McAfee). I
decided to scratch them off my list at this point.
 
Personally,  we settled for Computer Associates eTrust (a little over
$100 for five machines) and ClamAV.  My only issue with eTrust is lack
of support for recent distributions (in particular Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 3 and Red Hat 9 or Fedora). 
 
Nathan
 
--Here's a snippet from my previous post regarding F-Secure--
 
I recently posted the results of a full-scale, commercial anti-virus
review. In that email, I said that F-Secure had a per-server licensing
model (based on their web site). However (while in the midst of my
testing phase), I went back to their site and noticed that they have
switched their licensing model to per user when used to scan email. 

At the time of my review a few weeks ago, F-Secure said this about
F-Secure AntiVirus for Linux.

==
The command line scanner provides a versatile and powerful tool that
works both as a user-invoken command and as a platform for automated
antivirus systems. Detailed reporting and return codes ensure easy
integration with third party mail scanners such as AMaViS (A Mail Virus
Scanner). 
==

Now, it says this:

==
In case the product is used to scan e-mail traffic, licensing is based
on the number of users who have access to the services provided by the
product. In that case, the customer needs to buy a license for F-Secure
Anti-Virus for Linux Gateways
==

This means that in the last month they have gone from per user, to per
server, to per user again. A follow up with the sales director I was
talking to earlier yielded no response and no explanations.

In short, it's clear that these guys are in transition and aren't really
sure how to sell their products. I've scratched them off my list. For
those of you that can afford this kind of license, F-Secure does appear
to be a viable product from a technical standpoint since it incorporate
three different engines into one scanner.


        -----Original Message-----
        From: Ryan Finnesey [mailto:ryan.finnesey at CORPDSG.COM] 
        Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2003 8:53 PM
        To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
        Subject: scanners I have picked?
	
	

        I need to pick about four Command Line scanners for a MailScaner
deployment and I was reading
http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/serve/cache/213.html
<http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/serve/cache/213.html>  from
that list I have picked F-Secure Anti-Virus for Servers for Linux,
McAfee Virus Scan for Unix, CA eTrust eTrust Antivirus 7.0 and Sophos (I
hope I can get some per server pricing) but then I was also looking at
http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/serve/cache/88.html
<http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/serve/cache/88.html>  I do
not see a date on this posting.  Do you know if McAfee has updated the
product?  I also welcome any comments on the other scanners I have
picked.




        I would like to thank everyone for there time and help.




        Ryan Finnesey
        Diversified Solutions Group

        119 West 72 Street

        New York NY 10023
        *    ryan.finnesey at corpdsg.com
        * 212-920-0000 

        *  212-920-0001

	

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