AVP vs. F-secure

[Michael Edson]

Just wondering what advantage, if any, people see in F-
Secure over AVP. I know that F-secure uses both AVP's
engine plus F-prot. But even the Virus Bulletin review
that's linked on the F-Secure (Data Fellows) web site says
that because of the "medusa-like" nature of having the two
programs bundled as one, F-Secure missed viruses that AVP
did not.

Moreover, AVP is much cheaper than F-Secure, and has
automatic updating, unlike F-Secure's manual updating.

On the other hand, lots of people must use F-Secure, so
what's the up-side? Thus far, the two main pluses I see are
(a) it includes F-prot, and (b) it's scanning is much
faster. (No, I'm not a shill for AVP. I'm just trying to
make an informed decision.)

Note real email: mmedson at ibm dot net.

[Patrick Noyens]

On Sun, 21 Feb 1999 12:03:10 -0700, seeb...@spmfree.com (Michael
Edson) wrote:

:>Just wondering what advantage, if any, people see in F-

:>Secure over AVP. I know that F-secure uses both AVP's
:>engine plus F-prot.

Indeed, F-Secure uses 2 engines : AVP and (the old) F-Prot 2.x.

:>But even the Virus Bulletin review

:>that's linked on the F-Secure (Data Fellows) web site says
:>that because of the "medusa-like" nature of having the two
:>programs bundled as one, F-Secure missed viruses that AVP
:>did not.

There could be different reasons for this :

1. The AVP engine implemented in F-Secure is always a few builds
behind. I wonder what build from AVP is currently implemented in
F-Secure.

2. The AVP code analyzer (CA.AVC) seems to be disabled in F-Secure for
some dark reasons.... Pierre ?

3. The AVP executable unpacker (UNPACK.AVC) seems also to be disabled
in F-Secure.

4. Because F-Secure still uses the old F-Prot 2.x engine with an old
SIGN.DEF file from F-Prot 2.28b, it doesn't add much detection ability
to F-Secure in general.

:>Moreover, AVP is much cheaper than F-Secure, and has

:>automatic updating, unlike F-Secure's manual updating.
:>
:>On the other hand, lots of people must use F-Secure, so
:>what's the up-side? Thus far, the two main pluses I see are
:>(a) it includes F-prot, and (b) it's scanning is much
:>faster.

Is it indeed faster ? It could be due the missing code analyzer and
run-time unpacker in the AVP implementation in F-Secure.
I actually never noticed it is indeed faster though... I got the
impression F-Secure is *slower*, especially when scanning .zip
archives containing large Word documents.

:>(No, I'm not a shill for AVP. I'm just trying to
:>make an informed decision.)

For a home user or a small network, AVP is probably the best choice
because it's much cheaper.
The best way to find out the best solution for you, just download the
evaluation version from both products.

Regards,

Patrick Noyens
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E-mail: patrick.noyens@#ping.be (remove the # from #ping)
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[Mirage]

Currently F-Secure has more comprehensive network features, where AVP is
still developing theirs.

Any SysAdmin considering rolling out these products on a large network would
likely choose F-Secure because of its management features, where AVP would
likely be the better choice (for price and detection) for smaller networks.
If and when AVP has network management features built in, it would then be a
more attractive option for bigger network environments. For a single user,
AVP is likely the better choice.

Mirage