Kaspersky Small Office is the perfect next evolutionary step in internet security for your small business that may have thus far been relying on separate internet security applications installed on each of your PCs without centralized management ability. Your company liable has numerous PCs, a few laptops, several external storage devices and perhaps a server. Endpoint protection software can help you not only keep your PCs safe but also manage communications between your devices. They can also filter email and you can manage security from one central control console.
Kaspersky antivirus software consistently receives certifications from third-party testers. Within the last year their antivirus software has received ICSA, WCL, VB 100 and AV-Test certifications. It includes everything you need to keep your data and PCs protected such as the ability to combat viruses, spyware, adware, spam, hackers and even human error. Sometimes it is not an further than threat that compromises your company information – it is an internal error, such as one of your employees accidently sharing a file or folder via email, USB drive or a chat conversation. With Kaspersky you can set file sharing restrictions and lock down sensitive files in an encrypted file vault so it stays secure and within your control.
This endpoint protection software includes a few security options that few other applications offer. For example, chat protection. Though many companies use internally installed chat clients, many small companies or companies with remote sales teams rely on internet-based free chat clients like MSN, Yahoo or even Facebook. You can configure Kaspersky to monitor chat conversations and restrict file sharing. It also has a virtual keyboard that can be used to enter information safely into an online form; this protects your information from keyloggers and hackers. A further only one of its kind feature it offers is a safe run. In this safe run you can open suspicious files or programs isolated from your PC, this way you can investigate files without potentially compromising your network.
The main control screen is business-like, with a series of menu tabs down the left-hand side and details relevant to the selected tab in the pane on the right. The top of the screen is dominated by a huge blue ‘eye’ showing that the machine is protected. If a scan finds a potentially hazardous item, it turns yellow and for a virus or other malware, it turns red.
Most attacks call up a secondary dialogue box with a Fix-It button, which removes or quarantines the detected file.
File backup is available for the folders and filetypes you select and can be directed to a local, removable or network drive, or an FTP server, though there’s no online storage included with the package. You can schedule the backup and control the number of backup copies stored. There’s no partition or disk backup.
Other features contain hard drive deletion for removing all data from a drive, an on-screen keyboard to defeat keyloggers and the ability to make a rescue disk, to clean a system after an attack, when Windows won’t boot.
A full system scan took 135 minutes on our test PC, which gives Kaspersky SOS one of the slower scanning engines. It was thorough, though, finding three infected files, one containing adware and some vulnerable programs; apps which are legal in themselves, but which have known vulnerabilities to attack.
There’s small noticeable performance hit with the Kaspersky program in the social class, unless it’s performing a scan. With a scan in succession, the PC took around 12 percent long to perform a video conversion, which shouldn’t be much of problem for most customers.
Recent tests by AV-Comparatives on the protection offered by Kaspersky, rated it Advanced+ on pro-active anti-virus detection and in its overall, ‘real world’, dynamic test. This puts it in the top tier of AV harvest.
The extra server functions offered in the program, such as web access control and global password maintenance, need longer to learn and setup than in less thorough IS applications. You don’t have to use all elements in the suite of course, if they’re not appropriate to your business.
