New Antivirus by Sunbelt "Vipre"

Sunbelt is well known for other products such as Ninja (firewall level AntiSpam). They recently came out with an Antivirus designed around the concept of being light on resources. I did a quick search here and it seemed like nobody had ever heard of it. With how picky us "power" users are I figured everyone should take a look at it. Ive recently switched over from NOD32 after using NOD for several years. My IT firm will soon be using it on an enterprise server level as well. Its an excellent choice for those looking for good AV with a very small footprint.

Here is their website:
http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/

Here are some comparison stats:
http://www.vipreenterprise.com/Why-VIPRE-Enterprise/VIPRE-Stats.htm

 

People are most likely gonna stick with what's been around for a while and been known to be the best, so "Vipre" is gonna have a tough time.

 

Why not just use linux on your enterprise servers? No need for antivirus, and cheaper maintenance costs.

Those were my thoughts, I totally agree, and really, do we need yet another antivirus solution? There's so many already.

 

Antivirus Programs are needed on servers that manage Windows Files (E-Mail, File Sharing, etc...).

Edit: Nevermind, no enough time to download the 66 MB download of Vipre, sorry.

 

Sunbelt has never entered VIPRE in any lab tests. I suspect it is because the product would fail miserably. What good is a small footprint when the protection is second rate at best?
There was a review done on VIPRE through Wilders Security Forums September 2008. Apparently The software failed to detect/clean malware thrown at it by remove-malware.com. Sunbelt is trying to correct the problems.
Vipre Anti-Virus : Reviewed by remove-malware.com - Wilders Security Forums

Ill stick with NOD32. They have consistently passed lab testing, and have won more awards than either mcafee or Symantec's Norton.

 

After installing VIPRE and running a scan it found a virus on my laptop that Avast had not.

 

Thats not really saying very much. Recent Vista sp1 VB Bulletin testing of Avast were pretty terrible.
Apparently VIPRE's biggest issue is in normal bootmode it is unable to remove about 80% of the active threats once those threats were marked for deletion.

Avast! (Alwil)
Vista SP1
Status: FAIL
Failure reason: 19 wildlist misses (viruses currently infecting systems), 1 false positive
https://www.virusbtn.com/Session-65f9f7a742260735a89db7288098b346/vb100/archive/2008/10

As a network Admin why would you "settle" for second-rate antimalware protection anyways? If you want to see how well an Antivirus/Antimalware vendor's product performs under current Wildlist lab testing you should check out the above linked site. Or here: http://www.vistax64.com/system-security/172321-vista-sp1-antivirus-performance.html

 

Well one of the largest networks in my state which I happen to work for trusts it in a enterprise environment, that's good enough for me .

Tests and internet research is all good but first hand experience is usually the best determining factor for what works best for you.

 

The April 2008 VB test for Avast! 4.7.1098 on Vista SP1 Business summarizes;

"...The dual interface system has never been a favourite of mine, but here it seemed steady and responsive except during the on-access incident mentioned above, which does not reflect any likely real-world situation. Settings seemed plentiful, with defaults ignoring archives but full scanning available for those who want it, and detection rates were reasonable as ever. However, a set of file infectors recently added to the WildList set were missed, and a single item in the clean set was mistakenly flagged as malware, and thus Alwil misses out on a VB100 by a whisker".

That's rather far from a " pretty terrible" result as you call it.
Also, the first link for the October 2008 Windows Server 2008 test results from Virus Bulletin shows that Avast has passed.
Which means it didn't miss any wildlist entries nor did it score one false positive.
Those misses were from the April 2008 test results where Avast misses by a whisker.
Cheers.

 

If it was called Vip er instead of Vip re perhaps I'd consider it. I'll stick with my trusted Kaspersky thankyouverymuch.

 

i tested vipre and was not to impressed. it def didnt feel as light as they claim and it missed many things kaspersky and avira found. it also was not able to remove many things i tested it out on. imo its not ready for mainstream yet..its not a terrible av its just not in the leagues with the big boys yet

 

I have been a long time user of Sunbelt's CounterSpy and found it to be among the best at removing spyware. It got me out of many jams when others woud fail miserably. However, with the morphing in an AV program also, I am not so sure. i have been using it, but a buddy of mine has had some virii get by. Now we all know that if one clicks OK, it really does not matter what you are using

Still, the jury is still out on the new Vipre. I have faith, but it is an always shifing target and each AV out there gets changed and updated and the fields is always changing in the classic spy vs spy scenario of Mad Magazine

I am going to suggest NOD32 to my friend. That seems to be very well respected. The problem is that there is SO much MALWARE out there is is getting harder and harder to defend against. Dave

 

I switched over to Vipre having used Trend (awful), AVG (used to be good, but not anymore), Avira and Avast -- Vipre is easily the least instrusive, negates the need for Windows Defender and has done me well. Started with the free trial version and then purchased the licence that allows me to install Vipre on all of the computers we have at our home.
Try it. See for yourself.

 

As an update, I ran into some problems where the program would not install its own newer version: after a series of emails and assistance from the tech people at Sunbelt all was resolved. Not good that the problem was there: excellent, free and prompt attention from the technical support people that resolved the problem completely.

 

Um. The Norton AV resources thing can't be right. Norton uses such a small memory footprint that I can be compared to NOD32 now.