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avast! Server Edition - antivirus software for Windows Servers
avast! 4 Server Edition offers the most powerful protection to fight virus infections on your server or servers. It works both as primary protection of a file server itself, and, via its optional plug-ins, as protection for various server subsystems, such as electronic mail or firewall/proxy. Currently, the following plugins (editions) are available:
- MS Exchange Server 2000/2003/2007
- MS Proxy/ISA Server
- SMTP Server
- MS Sharepoint Server (including Office Sharepoint Server 2007)
Antivirus Kernel
 The latest version of avast! antivirus kernel features world-class
detection abilities together with high performance (data throughput).
You can expect 100% detection of In-the-Wild viruses and Trojan horses.
The kernel is certified by ICSA and the product frequently takes part
in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, yielding multiple VB100%
awards.
Anti-spyware built-in
Spyware is software installed on a computer that is designed to collect
information about the computer user, often without their knowledge or
consent. This can result in so called identity theft, or theft of
valuable information (e.g. bank or credit card details) or proprietary
business data. Spyware is often developed by organized crime rings
rather than lone individuals and may be installed by a virus.
Certified by West Coast Lab's Checkmark process, avast! has full
anti-spyware capabilities built-in, to make your protection even more
complete.
Direct Cluster and Terminal Services support
avast! 4 Server Edition is ready to work and even supports large
cluster and terminal servers. It contains direct support for cluster
setup, including a special wizard that makes the installation on
cluster easier.
To set up avast! on terminal environment, you can use another wizard
that guides you through the reconfiguration of avast! system for the
work in terminal mode. Such a reconfigured avast! system looks (and
behaves) to the terminal users as the standard avast! would for
workstations.
The
support for the terminals is not limited to the terminal services by
Microsoft; it is fully functional with Citrix MetaFrame system as well.
Integration with the Operating System
avast! 4 Server Edition has been fully tested with all editions of
Windows Servers (starting with NT 4.0 and up to Windows Server 2008,
including Windows Storage Server 2003 and Windows Datacenter Server
2008). It is fully optimized to take advantage of multiple CPUs and has
been stress-tested even on machines with a large number of processors
to verify exceptional robustness and scalability of its technology.
Special care has been taken to ensure 100% compatibility with advanced
server components such as the VSS (volume shadow copy) and FRS (file
replication services), guaranteeing that your server will run
flawlessly under all circumstances.
64-bit support
avast! 4 Server Edition works perfectly even on IA-64 and AMD-64 based
machines. It is one of the very few AV solutions on the market that
covers this fast-emerging platform that is likely to gain more and more
importance in the upcoming years. More information you may found on
page avast! Antivirus and Windows x64 Edition.
Resident Protection
 Resident protection which is the real-time protection on the computer,
is one of the most important parts of an antivirus program today.
avast! features a powerful resident module that is able to detect the
virus before it has any chance to infect your computer.
The
file system protection ensures that no virus will be executed on
startup, and no virus will be even uploaded to it. The default settings
of the resident protection are accommodated to the server environment -
it provides thorough scanning. It is possible to adjust the settings to
your requirements; you can specify to scan the copied files, or just
files with given set of extensions, etc.
An important new feature is so-called "semi-silent" mode of operation.
The purpose is to correctly display virus warnings on a server system.
It works like this: if a request to load an infected file comes from a
network, an automatic action is taken and nothing is displayed. On the
other hand, when the request comes from a local or terminal session,
the usual interactive mode is used - as in desktop antivirus.
The resident module is highly optimized for speed and tested even in
heavy load. It fully utilizes the possibilities of today's powerful
servers, such as multiple CPUs (the scanning can be parallelized).
Developed especially to use on Terminal Server, avast! 4 Server Edition
contains additional resident modules for e-mail protection
(Outlook/Exchange, Internet Mail) and browser protection (Script
Blocker).
User Interface
Even though the Server Edition contains both the user environments of
avast! - simple and enhanced - in server usage usually the enhanced
user interface will be employed (except for the terminal server). The
enhanced user interface gives you access to all the settings of avast!,
thus making it possible to fully configure it for extensive scanning.
The main principle is so called "antivirus task" based scanning. First,
you define the tasks used to scan for viruses, including the common
parameters. Then, you run these tasks (probably periodically). Every
task generates some results; of course, you can work with these results
afterwards. Resident protection is also a special type of task.
Another feature, closely connected with tasks, is the Scheduler. It
makes it possible to schedule the start of a particular task, both
one-time and periodically.
Strong self-protection
Some viruses may attempt to switch off a computer's antivirus software.
To help keep your protection working, even against the latest threats
that may try to disable your security protection, avast! has
best-in-class strong self-protection built in, to make sure, no matter
what you face, avast! carries on protecting your valuable data and
programs. This is based on the multi-award winning avast! antivirus
technology and provides an extra layer of security to ensure your data
and programs are always protected.
Notification Manager
To make work easier, Server Edition contains a special notification
manager. Here, you can define notification objects and associate them
with antivirus tasks (both resident and on-demand). Those notification
objects are used in the case when a virus is found.
The new version supports a number of notification objects, such as
sending e-mail messages using SMTP or MAPI (Outlook) Also supported
are; SMS as well, notification using the Windows popup mechanism
(network message), printing the message on a network printer, SNMP
traps, or even sending IM messages using MSN/Windows Messenger.
Anti-rootkit built-in
Rootkits are programs that install on your computer while keeping
themselves and their activities hidden to remain invisible to the use.
They represent a significant security risk on both home computers and
company networks and are notoriously difficult to find and remove.
Rootkits themselves are normally installed by a virus or other type of
malware infection and it is therefore highly recommended that computer
users have up to date antivirus/anti-spyware software installed and
running on their computer. One such system is avast! antivirus.
Based on the class-leading GMER technology, avast! can now scan your
live system for rootkit infections; no boots disks are required. If a
rootkit is discovered, it is initially disabled and then if it can be
safely removed without affecting the performance of the computer, it is
removed. avast! antivirus includes a virus database which can be
automatically updated to provide continuous protection against
rootkits.
Automatic Updates
Automatic updates are another key point in virus protection, both the
virus database and the program itself can be updated automatically. The
updates are incremental, and only new data is downloaded, thus reducing
the transfer time. The typical size of a virus database update is
approximately of 20-80kb, the program update usually has approximately
200-500kb.
If your Internet connection is persistent, the updates are performed
completely automatically in fixed time intervals. If you connect to the
Internet only occasionally, avast! watches your connection and tries to
perform the update when you are online.
Push Updates
A special feature of the Server Edition is PUSH updates. It is a
dramatic change in the philosophy of updates, usually every installed
program checks periodically and when a new version is available
downloads it. PUSH updates however are initialized by our servers; they
result in your computer quickly responding and performing the necessary
update. The system is based on the SMTP protocol. The updates
themselves are controlled by the avast! resident e-mail providers (MS
Outlook and Internet Mail).
The whole system is protected by asymmetric ciphers and is resistant to unauthorized misuse.
Virus Chest
The Chest can be thought of as a Quarantine area on your disk having
special properties that make it a safe isolated place suitable for
storing certain files. You can work with the files in the Chest with
security restrictions.
The main properties of the Virus Chest are complete isolation from the rest of the operating system.
Boot-time scan
A special avast! feature is the boot-time scan. It is important in the
case of suspect that there might be an active virus on the computer.
The boot-time scan is performed during the start of the operating
system, before the virus can get loaded/activated - thus preventing the
virus from spreading or taking actions to avoid being detected.
Command-line Scanner
Experienced users may like another Server Edition feature which is the
command-line scanner. The scanning can be controlled by many arguments
and switches; it can be used as a pipe filter, also a special
STDIN/STDOUT mode is available.
The module is intended to be used in BATCH programs. Its output is the
same as the output from the Enhanced User Interface tasks (including
the report files).
Web Shield
Web Shield is a unique feature of avast! that enables it to monitor and
filter all HTTP traffic coming from Web sites on the Internet. Since an
increasing number of viruses (and other malware, such as adware,
spyware and dialers) are being distributed via the World Wide Web, the
need for effective countermeasures has also increased. Web Shield acts
as a transparent HTTP proxy and is compatible with all major web
browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mozilla and
Opera.
Unlike most competitive solutions, Web Shield's impact on browsing
speed is almost negligible. This is because of a unique feature called
"Intelligent Stream Scan" that lets the Web Shield module scan objects
on-the-fly, without the need of caching. Stream scanning is performed
in operating memory only (without the necessity to flush the contents
to disk), providing maximum possible throughput.
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avast! 5 Free Antivirus
