AVG Anti-Virus: A Low-Cost Anti-Virus Alternative

Protecting your network from viruses and Trojans isn’t cheap, but it’s significantly cheaper than losing employee productivity or mission-critical data due to a virus outbreak. One option to help trim your security costs is to use one of the low-cost alternatives. Many organizations are reluctant to try these alternatives because they consider them to be less reliable and less secure than the name-brand products. Nonetheless, there are low-cost solutions that might work well enough for you to consider, depending on the size of your shop and your security needs.

One such alternative is Grisoft Inc.’s AVG Anti-Virus. Grisoft was founded in 1998 as a holding company for Czech Republic-based Grisoft, s.r.o., a company that specializes in anti-virus software. Grisoft makes its AVG Anti-Virus solution available free to home users.

The Enterprise version of AVG is split into two different versions-one for servers, the other for workstations-and includes an admin module to make it easy to deploy the program to the network and to manage virus updating and other features.

Performing the network install for the admin module can be a little complicated because it requires manually creating some directories on the server and copying required setup and other files to those directories. The manual work is a little annoying, but it’s not overly difficult.

One of the steps involves creating the folder that workstation installs of AVG will use to communicate with the server and to obtain updates. You can use this folder, for example, to automatically deploy the latest definition files to the network. You can then configure the server edition to automatically connect to the AVG Web site on a regular basis to check for updates and download them to the communication folder. The workstation component will then communicate at regular intervals with the server to obtain updates. If you’d prefer, you can also configure the workstations to go directly to the AVG site for updates.

Setting up AVG for network use requires creating the communication folder and connecting to it in the interface from the workstation installs, so it’s a critical component for interaction between the different pieces of the program. You’ll also use the network connections between the workstations and server to schedule scans on network drives. These can also be scheduled locally, but if you want to have more control over network scans, AVG allows you to manage them centrally via the admin module.

A wizard in the admin module walks you through creating a network install script for AVG, and after you install the product itself, another wizard launches to step you through setting up basic program options. After that, you’re on your own as far as configuring the Update Manager and Scheduler features, which automate the definition updates and scanning.