Microsoft Forefront (Discontinued Product) vs. Webroot Antivirus + Internet Security Complete (SecureAnywhere)

In large deployments, I have found Microsoft Forefront to be very effective at combating the majority of threats faced by our users. It provides the base platform for catching threats that would otherwise threaten our users and their data. If you have an environment that is under constant malware threat, then a secondary program may be needed as required.

Incentivized

Webroot can be great if you have many employees using computers. Sensitive business information can be accessed by malicious threats online if your employees are not trained to avoid these problems. In this case, I think it's important to have software to protect you. If working with a smaller team (and not doing any sort of video production or other intensive software/applications) I can't see a need for anything like Webroot. Learning how to use the internet safely and protecting your file storage are things to be done on the cheap and with smarts.

Incentivized

• SCEP is a light weight client which is minimally impactful on the user end.
• Forefront's management console provides excellent monitoring and reporting.
• Setup and configuration is very easy.

Incentivized

• Webroot provides a very easy to use web interface with GSM. From a single dashboard we can control all of our endpoints that are currently using Webroot services. This is extremely helpful for central management for my engineers.
• Webroot's new (2.0) plugin for Automate (formerly LabTech) provides us with integration into our RMM platform that allows for a large majority of the daily operational tasks to be completed without ever having to move to a different application and/or the web dashboard. The integration is key for engineers to make changes on the fly and quickly. They have done a good job with the 2.0 plugin after coming from the 1st iteration.
• Webroot interface on the machines is a simple and easy UI to follow and understand. Seeing what the product is doing and how it is configured is very straightforward and doesn't require much hunting with the local interface on machines.

Incentivized

• Malware detection is not quite 100%. We have to use a secondary program occasionally.
• On low ram and weak CPU systems scanning can freeze the machine.
• The same reporting tools that are on the console version, aren't on the client.

Incentivized

• It would be nice if there was a notification when Webroot blocked something. Power users may need to legitimately edit things like their hosts file, but they dont know Webroot is preventing them from doing so. They could easily temporarily disable it to do what they need to do if they were aware. Same thing goes for files that get quarantined without notice, it leaves the user wondering why their legitimate file keeps disappearing.
• While the web based console is nice and easy to use, it could use a little better reporting.
• If an administrator disabled a feature (like the firewall, for example) then the Webroot GUI should not alert the end user about whenever they open it. The software should be aware it is being administratively controlled.

Incentivized

It's easy to renew with Webroot, their support is very attentive and highly available. However if you do choose to change products, they even provide means of removing the software from your endpoints via the admin portal which is very convenient.

Incentivized

We have not had to use Webroot support much over the years. The one or two times we did we were referred to online documentation and in a somewhat condescending manner in one case and in another case, the support person did not demonstrate much knowledge of their product and referred us to the user community for support.

Incentivized

The biggest advantage that MSF and SCEP provide over Norton is: One: Far less client overhead required. Both Norton and McAfee are highly intensive client side when in use. Two: We've had far better luck using the Microsoft system with its detection capabilities, versus the others. Three: It is tied right into the Microsoft updating system, which provides central updating capabilities of av/mal/windows updates.

Incentivized

As previously mentioned, Webroot is struggling to compete. Specifically, it is struggling to show value when similar products are catching more and offer more complete packages for remediation as well. We have discontinued the use of Webroot in favor of offering more advanced protection tools by default to our contracted clients.

Incentivized

Ease of implementation across various devices is easy and efficient regardless of scale. Whether it is 5 devices or 500 the product continually proves its the best in its class.

Incentivized

• Less turnaround on virus based issues.
• Helps reduce malware issues over time.
• Can breed overconfidence in the system, so people don't always try a second tool.

Incentivized

• It has had a mostly positive impact as we have not had any breaches.
• The only negative impact has been when Webroot Antivirus + Internet Security Complete (SecureAnywhere) changed something on their end that caused one of our business applications to not be usable by end-users. That cost our business a fair amount as it took 4 days before it could be used again.

Incentivized