Vanquishing Viruses: A Primer for the Hunter

Consider yourself under the threat of constant attack—viruses aren’t going away. Here, we examine five network anti-virus solutions that can aid you in your fight.

PC-cillin is yet another virus scanner hoping to cash in on the feature-hungry crowd. It supports limited POP3 email virus scanning (Outlook Express 4.01 and above and Eudora 4.0 and above only); Internet download scans; and Web site filtering by IP address. As a welcome new feature, PC-cillin supports the download of virus updates incrementally, so it’s not necessary to download the entire virus list at every update.

PC-cillin’s standout features include a highly configurable scan manager (scheduler), detailed event logs for each scan type, and myriad virus update options.

PC-cillin’s virus scanner and real-time scanner have a solid look and feel and perform well, but like many of the other packages tested, seem painfully slow when scanning ZIP files. I also found PC-cillin slow to recover when a scan was canceled.

PC-cillin offers granular scheduling, plus a slick incremental download feature that keeps package updates small for users with slow Internet connections. (Click image to view larger version.)

Still, PC-cillin is a solid contender overall in the anti-virus protection arena and is a good fit for small to medium shops and even home users seeking power with simplicity.

About the Author

Chip Andrews, MCSE+I, MCDBA is a software security architect at (Clarus Corp.). Chip maintains the (sqlsecurity.com) Web site and speaks at security conferences on SQL Server security issues.

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