Comprehensive Endpoint Security
Need a comprehensive security protection suite that will guard your endpoints? McAfee's Total Protection for Endpoint–Enterprise Edition may be your answer. McAfee's multifunctional unified-platform security suite comprises a system firewall, antivirus and host intrusion protection, along with web content filtering — all managed from a single management console. The software makes regulatory compliance easy and may lower the total cost of managing endpoint security.
End-User Advantages
In addition to the comfort of knowing that their systems are effectively protected, a big advantage for end users is the transparency of the suite and the granularity of customization. Depending on the privileges designated by the IT department, users can schedule their scans to run when convenient, view detected threats and set security protection to appropriate levels depending on their environment.
Another benefit is that the suite lets users securely connect a wide range of mobile devices to user directories, Wi-Fi, a virtual private network and strong authentication mechanisms without unnecessary complexity.
Why It Works for IT
Overall, Total Protection delivers a security umbrella that, while comprehensive, is not overly complex to deploy and administer, at a competitive price. It includes one year of Gold-level technical support.
IT managers will especially love ePolicy Orchestrator 4.5, an elegantly designed all-in-one, unified web-based management dashboard. The ePO tool manages and provides reporting for all the endpoint components in this suite as well as most of McAfee's other products, making it easy to incorporate add-ons. McAfee Agent v.4.5 is the client-side framework and offers secure communication between ePO and point products, allowing these devices to focus on policy enforcement while delivering logging and policy storage services.
The suite as tested included enterprise versions of VirusScan v.8.7i, AntiSpyware v.8.7, Host Intrusion Prevention v.7 and SiteAdvisor v.3. E-mail server protection is offered for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino v.7.5 on Windows.
The IT staff will appreciate the advanced detection technology, code-named Artemis, that McAfee incorporates into its antivirus protection. This technology combines multiple technologies, including heuristics and generic detection, to find unknown viruses, even if they're contained within compressed files. Artemis will capture and fingerprint the offending malware in real time and transmit an appropriate response without waiting for a new administrative action.
Total Protection for Endpoint addresses another crucial educational network need: delivering security to non-Windows platforms such as Mac, Linux, Unix and mobile devices. McAfee's documentation provides detailed policy setup for servers and endpoints; offers dashboard activation; and carefully walks IT managers through component deployment on endpoints in logical order, significantly cutting deployment time.
Disadvantages
Installation on Windows Server 2008 R2 in tandem with SQL Server 2005 Express is not as straightforward as it could be, and the documentation does not offer complete information on resolution. McAfee's documentation says that SQL Server 2005 will automatically be installed if no other database is detected, but that was not the case. McAfee's technical support, however, was very knowledgeable and promptly provided answers.
A successful installation on Windows Server 2008 R2 requires a hand edit of the server registry to change Data Value. It also involves manually enabling TCP/IP as well as SQL browser services in SQL Server Express, once manually downloaded and installed. The wizard installs Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable and Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable x86, and will install SQL Server Backward Compatibility if needed.
