Scanning for Viruses over network

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[H]ard Texan

[H]ard|Gawd
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I am helping a friend's Aunt and Uncle keep costs down on their new business network. I have a 24port switch and a Network attached storage device with a firewall on it too, but I need to have some sort of antivirus for the workstations.

Is it possible to have one computer with a paid version of an antivirus, scan all of the other computers over the network. That is, if I set all of the workstations to full share on the c: drive (I know it's not secure) and scan all of the computers from over the network.

Any other comments or suggestions on how to keep costs down for the new business for an antivirus solution would be great.

Here is my original post in Gen Software.http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?threadid=752386
 
Ive looked into this too.

From what I have gathered there is no virus software short of something that only IBM, Dell, Microsoft, and other fortune 500 companies could afford that would do this task.

The easiest way is to just install virus scan on each workstation and tell it to scan at like 3am so it doesnt interfear with any work.
 
You will be able to scan the files themselves, but not other things like mail, registry, etc...
 
Yeah, that makes since...I don't think they can afford an outage. Thanks for your help guys.
 
It will cost you money, but NAV CE will do that.
Set each client up to be managed by a central server and you can schedule scans whenever you want.

Otherwise,
If all the machines are at least 2K you can map everyone's C$ drive from the 'protected' machine and scan them. But as others said it won't catch everything.
Realtime scanning with up to date def's is the way to go if you can.
 
Yeah, what you want done will not give you the real time protection you need. Get a client software like NAV on each workstation and schedule them to do full scans once a week, update once or twice a week, and run the real-time protection.

It will cost some (about $50 per workstation I think) but is well worth it.
 
Try TrendMicro OfficeScan too. I've used McAfee, Norton, and Trend and I like Trend the best.
 
I agree with what others have said. Sure, it's tight paying the fee for so many clients for a business-sized client/server license for something like NAV corporate or small business, but ask your aunt and uncle this: How much will it cost you to entirely lose business functionality for several hours to a day? More than the license? Buy it.

Something else you may consider is stopping viruses before they make it through the door, so to speak - and scanning email is a big step in that direction. Do they run their own mail server? If they do, it would be trivial to install server-side virus scanning for their email with a package like Clam Antivirus.
 
I tried replying to this, but, I'm not sure what happened to my post.

Anyway, most AV programs could scan a mapped drive. So, if you mapped the admin share (c$) it may work.

Otherwise, I agree with Zerox that you could look into mainly filtering at the internet gateway. That's where at least 90% (IMO) of viruses come from (the internet) so if you filter them out there, they might be ok.

The problem is setting this up is either going to be expensive if you use a commercial solution, or real time consuming if you try to set up a linux/clam AV solution.
 
are there any free AV solutions out there he could try? Are they just too horrible to give a shot?
 
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