[THIN] OT: CounterSpy Enterprise has been released
- From: "Evan Mann" <emann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:03:35 -0500
As an update to the previous spyware discussion for an enteprise
product, Sunbelt Software has released CounterSpy Enterprise. It's a 30
day, 5 agent trial. I've played with it only for a few minutes and my
comments so far:
1) Extremely CPU intensive when doing scanning. 50-70% seems to be the
norm. I don't understand why
2) Deploying agents is very easy from the central, but the agent is
about 8MB, so it's time consuming across WAN links
3) The central management is very nice. You create a policy and assign
computers, then deploy an agent. Policies let you define different scan
schedule, how you want to report, what types of spyware you want to
quarantine, ignore, reportonly.
4) My policy settings for ReportOnly are being ingored. I have 2 agents
in a policy with ReportOnly and items were still Quarantined.
5) There is an agent deployment option that lets you package an MSI
6) The Q&A suggest setting up localized servers, but it doesn't indicate
if you can centrally manage remote servers, and from what I see in the
program, you cannot.
7) No active protection, but v1.1 will offer this option
This product is far superior to Pest Patrol Corporate Edition and is on
par with WebRoot SpySweeper Enterprise. The next release onf CounterSpy
Enterprise, according to a Q&A on Sunbelt's site, will introduce some
very nice features. In particular, active protectiom, and hopefully a
more WAN like management system where you can manage remote servers via
1 central console and deploy agents from a remote server to be parented
to that server for updates, via this central console.
As far as spyware detection, it seemed to do a good job picking up items
on the computers I have tested. It doesn't seem to pick up all the
typical cookies that ad-aware will grab as neglible objects, but I'm not
concerned with those. It grabbed things like Hotbar and browser
hijackers.
I noticed it grabs VNC as a spyware app by default, so you will want to
allow this app if you rely on VNC.
Pricing starts at $225 per 10 but from my previous experience with
Sunbelt, the pricing gets very attractive as you increase the seats. A
previous quote I receved for WebRoot SpySweeper Enterprise at 200 seats
had the price around $27-28/seat, but someone told me they were down to
$10/seat for SpySweeper Enterprise. I believe they had 1000 seats
however. I think appropriate pricing for a product of this type should
be in the $15/seat price at 200 seats, roughly. That's just my opinion
however.
Other related posts:
- » [THIN] OT: CounterSpy Enterprise has been released
