ETrust AntiVirus 7.0
There are basically two sets of interfaces the user and administrator must contend with and, to be honest, neither are difficult to come to grips with. The RealTime Monitors interface appears a little bland when compared to some of the other packages but it does follow the typical Windows "tabbed pages" scheme so anyone can drive it. (Its blandness is occasionally relieved by "cute" graphics of viruses.)
Features are standard with the user able to nominate what types of files are scanned and how incidents are treated--the default for worms and Trojans, for example, is to delete. The scanner features the obligatory heuristics and also has a "System Cure" option that cleans the OS and modifies the registry so at times this may require a reboot to complete the cleaning process. As readers may be aware Vet AV is now owned by CA and as a consequence you can configure the scan engine to be either Vet or InoculateIT.
There are a couple of very useful additions that we quite like: for example, the ability to exclude processes or directories from real-time scanning and the scanner can be configured to deny access to files with specified extensions. And, should a specific user be detected as the source of a particular incident, they can be automatically quarantined from the network for a prescribed period of time.
We initially expected to be able to perform all administration tasks from the eTrust AntiVirus scanner application, which has both a Local and an Administrative view. However, the initial "push" of the application to clients on your domain or workgroup is actually handled by another dedicated application called Remote Install. It was at this point that we experienced some installation problems and had to avail ourselves of CA's tech support. Initially we were unable to "find" any of the target PCs on the network and had to tweak the settings to extend the timeout period amongst other settings. Then we were unable to push to a client that was a member of the server's domain, although we could easily push to any of the workgroup PCs. This required additional rejigging of some of the settings. Unfortunately this all occurred close to deadline so we were unable to determine if the problems were specific to our network.
Once the problems had been ironed out it was quite simple to push the AV software to the nominated PC.
From this point on all administrative tasks could be handled via the AntiVirus console.
From the console the target PC's settings can be altered and basic stats obtained. If you wish to have different sets of policies for different groups of users, new "branches" must be added to the organisational tree and the relevant users placed in each group. Different blanket policies can then be applied to each branch.
As can be seen from Figure 1 the tree structure is very easy to navigate and is divided into logical units such as "configuration settings" which includes e-mail polices and enforced policies (the latter enables the administrator to setup various Alert policies, Realtime Scan policies, Schedule Jobs, and distribute signature schedules, for example). In each case, multiple policies or schedules can be created and individually applied to various branches.
Alerts can be quite finely customised to not only be sent to various targets but also the level of severity of the alert can be filtered and custom notifications configured for a large number of specific scan engine events--events such as "error scanning memory".
| Product | eTrust Antivirus 7.0 |
| Price | US$65 for single user or US$35 for up to 99 seats |
| Vendor | Computer Associates |
| Phone | 1800 224 636 |
| Web | www.ca.com |
| Interoperability |  |
| Interface is logical and easy to navigate; wide range of platforms supported. | |
| Futureproofing |  ½ |
| Strong feature set particularly with regards to alerts and inherited properties. | |
| ROI |  |
| Cost per seat is quite low for five or more users. | |
| Service |  ½ |
| 24x7 phone support; e-mail and Web support. | |
| Rating |  |
