Symantec Sucks

I've run into yet another instance of symantec doing what it does best... and that is suck.

When one of my users emails me saying they have a virus... I hope for the best, maybe it's just a spoof IE pop up or something harmless. We spend $2000 per year on our symantec endpoint security renewal so... hell, it should work right?

WRONG. I spent 30 minutes messing with this girls computer and had to grab a spare computer to put her on because it's going to take a good amount of time to get her system back up and running without this Personal Anti virus BU#$@*U( which has disabled task manager and regedit from running.


When I have a virus, my first course of action shouldn't be to install another anti virus product if i already have one that cost $2000. Symantec sucks... that is the point of this thread. Your product is meaningless if it can't do it's job.

End Solution?

I'm switching to VIPRE by sunbelt software for $10 per seat for 50 seats. So instead of $2000 it's going to be $500 and it's actually going to work as opposed to this crap symantec is selling.

I installed Vipre and it found :

5 rogue security applications : fraudtool.win32 and advancedvirusremover
1 backdoor bot
2 trojans
33 traces of virtumonde adware/malware

We use opendns which helps some w\ people browsing to random internet sites.

Anyhow. Full scan w\ vipre antivirus+antispyware, reboot and everything is fine.

Symantec = "quarantine" reboot, infection still rampant.. popups all over the place, need to download another program to remove the infections !

This was the same thing w\ my moms computer last month... i think she was using norton 2007 or something and had a similar fake antivirus virus take over her system... loaded up vipre and bam... all better.

PC Magazine just did a review on Symantic. They scored very well in comparison to some of their competition.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343088,00.asp

"Symantec's antivirus engine gets very high marks from all the independent testing labs. Both West Coast Labs and ICSA Labs certify it for virus detection and cleaning; West Coast Labs adds checkmark certification for Trojan detection. Symantec has passed all of the last 10 Windows-based VB100% tests from Virus Bulletin—in fact, the last time it failed was in 1999. BitDefender, Kaspersky, and McAfee all failed to achieve VB100% in at least one of the last 10 tests; Trend Micro Internet Security Pro v2 no longer participates in this test.

Austrian test lab AV-Comparatives gave Symantec an ADVANCED+ rating (the highest) in its most recent eval of on-demand virus scanning. In the lab's proactive non-signature-based test, Symantec rated ADVANCED, with few false positives. Kaspersky matched those results while ESET flipped them—it got ADVANCED+ for proactive detection and ADVANCED for signature-based detection.

Magdeburg-based AV-Test rated Symantec Very Good (the highest rating) in four categories: detection of malware, low false positives, fast scanning, and fast response to new malware. It also rated Symantec Good for detection of adware/spyware and proactive detection of new, unknown threats. All of the other vendors I've reviewed scored Satisfactory or lower in at least one category. These independent labs results indicate that Norton 360's antivirus component is top-notch."

Kaspersky is good, but it's pricey, and there is better.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2351578,00.asp

"Kaspersky detected 88 percent of the malware samples. That's decent, but the beta version of Norton Internet Security 2010 detected 97 percent. Kaspersky left behind many EXE files and tons of nonexecutable malware traces, scoring 6.7 of 10 possible points—a hair below average.

In a parallel test using commercial keyloggers, Kaspersky scored 1.6 points, even lower than the 1.8 attained by the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials. Fortunately for Kaspersky, I give much less weight to this test.

I broke out separate scores for removing rootkits (both malware and keyloggers) and scareware. The average in both cases is 5.6 points; Kaspersky came in below that with 5.1 points against rootkits and 3.0 points against scareware."

for a good look at the firewall results above go to
http://www.matousec.com

Kaspersky received high scores!!!!!!!!!

so... finally got to talk to my co-worker and she was saying that she tried to do "clean all" but "it" told her it was not licensed....

so now I'm left assuming that she was trying to use the fake av program LOL jesus....

I agree. But I needed to rant at the time I created this thread. I just think that for the amount of money we paid for the symantec endpoint, that it should be more effective. I shouldn't have to download free ware or other AV programs if I've got one that I paid $2000 for.

I just got a new quote from vipre today. $1095 for 3 years (50 licenses) + 50 licenses for home users so employees can also put it on their home computers.... compared to $2000 per year for symantec this is just phenomenal.