Sonicwall Virus protection

Is anyone using the Mcafee virus protection option via Soniwall? If so, how is it working? Can you compare it to the straight Mcafee offerings?

John

Reply to
John
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What he is refering to *IS* av on the desktop - sepcial vesrion of McCaffee that talks to the firtewall - if the desktop AV is not installed or the virus definition is to old for the mccafee on the desktop, the sonicwall blocks internet access for that box.

Sonicwall also has integrated virus scanning at the firewall level - looks for virus signatures in the packets as they come in - but that is not what the poster was refering to.

-Sean

Reply to
T. Sean Weintz

Never depend on the firewall, even with virus-scanning/attachment blocking to protect your network from viruses. There are many threats from viruses that don't have anything to do with your inbound traffic through the firewall.

Keep using AV software on the desktop, and do anything else if you want too.

Reply to
Leythos

You are right. I am talking about the desktop/firewall approach. It would seem to enforce the compliance or updating of dats, but pound for pound, dollar for dollar, is it better than Mcafee alone? I think I read that only internet capable machines could run it, is that right?

Is anyone using it today?

John

Reply to
John

I have it all (from SonicWall). I use the Firewall based scanner, the Intrusion Prevention, Content Filter and yes, the client based virus scanner (Overkill maybe, but I'm a one man IT show and I can't afford to go around cleaning machines).

"Pound for pound", the client AV through the firewall is cheaper. As of a couple months ago, you can now even automate the scanning of machines at the client. It used to be the AV software on the client only watched for incoming viri and if you wanted to scan the disk, you had to initiate that from the client. Now I do that via the firewall admin panels.

You are correct though about the internet. If a machine does not try to BROWSE the internet, it will never have the AV installed. In-other-words, if you only setup eMail (no browsing of web pages) the Firewall won't force the AV software. An easy fix for that is as an administrator, when you setup a machine on your LAN, start the browser which will force the AV software to install on the client. Once you have it installed, even if you never browse the internet again, it will still download updates. HOWEVER, if a machine is never connected to the ineternet, then NO, you cannot have the AV running on it.

On the other hand, if all your internet capable machines are getting the AV updates, there should be no viri floating around for the unprotected machine, unless they're exposed to floppy or USB drives?

-Wayne

Reply to
wowcow

Thanks for the info. That's exactly what I was looking for.

John

Reply to
John

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