ESET PROTECT vs. Symantec Critical System Protection

Comprehensive threat prevention against a variety of threats, such as viruses, ransomware, and spyware is effectively provided by ESET PROTECT. The cross platform compatibility of this software is advantageous for business with diverse IT environments such as those combination of Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. Some industries, such highly regulated sectors with specific compliance needs, may find it more cost-effective, however it is less suitable for small enterprises with limited IT resources and for organizations with severe budgetary limits.

Symantec Critical System Protection (CSP) is very well suited for environments that do not change such as point of sale systems and critical servers. This product is spectacular at protecting end of life operating systems when supporting legacy software prevents upgrades. When security updates are no longer available, CSP will prevent exploits and other malware from taking advantage. This product is not well suited for systems that require a lot of changes. For one, it does not notify when a change has been blocked by CSP, causing some server administrators to waste many hours chasing a phantom technical problem when turning off CSP could have solved it right away. Also, profiling takes time so systems that constantly change would need hundreds of exceptions made.

Incentivized

• ESET provides comprehensive, transparent protection for my MacOS devices without interfering with the efficiency of my operating system.
• It's easy to install, configure (default settings are great for just about everyone), and update.
• ESET's customer communications, including a very detailed knowledge base online, make it clear I've chosen the right antivirus solution!

Incentivized

• Data Center Security 6.0 and higher allows you to easily build out policies to deploy to monitor/block what is required/needed.
• The agent that is installed on the hosts has a small footprint in terms of CPU and memory usage.
• The ability to customize it anyway you need to as well as utilize out of the box policies to monitor critical OS functionality.

• If the system administrator has functions such as pop-up notification and alert mail transmission, I believe that countermeasures can be taken faster
• It often gets in the way of the network system.
• Communication between PCs under the same network may be hindered, which may be an obstacle to verification.

Incentivized

• Tuning takes a very long time
• Turning the product on or off can take time
• When an action is prevented by CSP, there is no pop up or notification, making this a burden for server administrators

Incentivized

I'm giving it a 10, because I would totally have no reservations about staying on with eSet for another 3 years once our contract comes up for renewal. We are looking to transfer to a different product in January, however. This is due to a special pricing contract with the state of Ohio that made a normally much more expensive product very affordable and was cheaper than our coming eSet renewal cost. This is a very special case only available to government and educational organizations, but had that not been offered, we would have gladly stayed with eSet.

Incentivized

We had issues initially getting all of the policies implemented and working since it can be hard to figure out what setting is coming from what policy. Once you get your stack of policies setup and working, the product works great. The installers just work and knowing that they can remove other AV software when you install it can save you a lot of time and headaches.

Excellent support from ESET and when we had questions regarding the initial deployment they were there. The questions we put forth were answered immediately with great detail. Any of the items we put forth, scenarios, were given a good solution from ESET to fit our needs. This company stands by their product and are happy to step up when needed.

Incentivized

They respond quickly and efficiently without the need to reiterate the actual issue. Their backline support is amazing and always there for us when it is needed. They explain the troubleshooting steps taken and what they did to help us resolve the issue just incase it creeps up again we have the information to correct it ourselves.

Do the full scan at the beginning and be prepared to wait until it is done. It will find things you did not know were there. You can leave on the Apple firewall as well as the ESET firewall. There have been no conflicts. Remember to remove emails from being backed up, so you do not have spam on your backup! This was the mistake I made.

Incentivized

We really like the lightness of ESET, this really is a differential in your favor, the way it operates quietly in the background even running a scan was something that interested us, nothing worse than an antivirus locking everything like a scan and still end up issuing scandalous false detections, in the end the choice was made by ESET much because of this differential.

Incentivized

We evaluated Bit 9 and you have more flexibility with the rule set and do not rely on the cloud to tell you what is approved and not approved. You build out the policies the way you need them to be and who better knows the environment that the people that work it daily.

• Stopped several malware outbreaks that would have had considerable downtime on endpoints.
• Stopped several ransomware attacks that would have potentially costs large sums of money and downtime.
• Allowed us to utilize Eset itself in lieu of a patchwork of platforms to accomplish the same tasks. Saving us several thousand per year.

Incentivized

• Great protection for unchanging systems
• We have comfort that the protected systems are safe from intrusion
• Excellent price

Incentivized