My primary role at eVantage Technology is to understand client challenges, then work with our technical team to provide a unique solution that applies to those issues. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been approached by companies who have fallen victim to attacks on their company data.
Oftentimes, I’ll find that these companies are running regular off-the-shelf retail antivirus programs that you would usually purchase for your personal laptop.
These products are great for personal use, but usually have some issues associated with using them on an enterprise scale. Here are the 3 O’s of individual AV software:
1. Ownership
For one, each user must own his or her own license for the software. Managing and updating these licenses individually can be a huge waste of time for your IT department.
2. Overhead
If you’re user-base is small enough, then usually it “makes sense” for your IT to go around to each workstation and run the updates and scans individually. This obviously reallocates time and resources towards administrative work away from strategic work.
3. Obstruction
The fact that your IT needs to chase your users to ensure their AV is running and that any threats are resolved. The prompt usually seems to come at the worst time, it slows down your computer, and prevents you from doing work.
As you may have guessed, I spent an embarrassing amount of time on www.Thesaurus.com trying to make this list. I came very close to including ‘obstreperous’…
What we recommend, in a lot of cases, is using a Managed Antivirus solution. The best thing about a managed AV solution is that it is centralized! Your IT team can control the AV for all your workstations from a single point on your server. It significantly reduces your IT overhead and decreases the amount of time they spend troubleshooting AV issues.
Additionally, you only need to keep track of one license, so when it comes to renewing and upgrading software, it becomes significantly easier.
Finally, it keeps your users happy, because the updates run silently in the background without them even knowing.
If you want to know more about what type of solution might work best for your business, contact us! We’d be happy to talk.