Digital Ship

IT and communications for the deep sea commercial shipping sector

The best Anti-Virus Product for Ships ?

Even though we use VSAT on almost 90% of our ships, Anti-Virus is still a problem when downloading the daily updates. MCafee for example, wants to pull down almost 10Mb daily which doesn't cost us any more but can be pain on a 128Kb link.

Does anyone have any good experience of AV products especially those of which download small updates ? Sophos ? AVG ?

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Permalink Reply by Ewan Robinson on May 31, 2011 at 9:51

I know this is an old thread, but the subject is an ongoing problem for anyone who gets to answer the phones from Masters and then explain to Operations department why the vessel cannot receive emails, because a PC has crashed due to Virus load.

I have to put my Hand up and say I am a client of Youri's.

We trialled eset on a set of 10 vessels we have using Virtualised computers and double fall back servers. Some are commercial, the rest are in house designed and produced.

We have had NO virus problems on these vessels. in 2 years.

We now have some 34 of our vessels using Youri's product.

We were losing about 2.3 computers per year per vessel prior to this, and its 'cheaper' to buy a pc from an agent than it is to ship just one.

I was dubious of Eset at first, having only the 'land' version to test, but have been very pleasantly surprised by Youri's teams product and ability to provide support when required.

As has also been mentioned, prevention is the best cure. We restrict all logins to user permissions only AND we password protect the Eset interface.

Between the in-house virtual environment and good AV, we passed ROI on the new hardware within 18 months, and our total comms (VFD and Sat-C) is less than 950 per vessel per month (Average).

Cheers

Ewan

Permalink Reply by Gary McDonald on May 31, 2011 at 11:08

Hello All,

 

Anti-virus protection is an important subject and not something that should be overlooked. Especially with internet connectivity becoming more common at sea.

Digital Ship asked me a write an article on the subject which can be found in this months edition of DS.

Or you can download it online @ http://www.itatsea.net/download/digitalshipmay11.pdf 

 

I hope you find it an interesting read.

 

Regards,

 

Gary McDonald - IT@Sea UK.

Permalink Reply by Santtu Erich on June 14, 2011 at 15:31

I use F-Secure with policy manager and proxy

 

http://www.f-secure.com/system/fsgalleries/manuals/fspmp200_admingu...

Permalink Reply by Grzegorz Pardyka on June 14, 2011 at 18:24

And what about using Commbox Shore/Vessel Network Manager and QuickFile module for file transfers for it? Have anybody of you any experience with it?

It can be Weekly updates?

example for Kaspersky AntiVirus is about 4.5 MB for weekly update.

 

If you use Administration kit with proper settings - you will need only one online session for each vessel - the rest of machines should update via local LAN connection as a slave host with master server.

Permalink Reply by Ewan Robinson on June 15, 2011 at 9:41

Grzegorz

The problem with what you outline, and we do use some of the commbox solutions, is that it is stil 4.5Mb per week. Thats a huge amount of data.

The last 3 weeks updates with Port-it were 362, 311 and 360 Kb before any compression.

Thats a huge data saving over the course of a year.

Cheers

Ewan

Permalink Reply by Jean Marc Duc on June 15, 2011 at 21:04

hi there,

 

I discover today this interesting and very long discussion which started almost 3 years ago! not bad! a lot of changes and .5new services have been developed and proposed to the market since you asked the first question. speaking about volume of data or engine update is interesting but what about the quality of the protection? we all know that because of the new technologies and the fast increase of the capacities, the mariners have now the possibility to surf the web, connect to Facebook or use their own computers onboard the vessel. this opening to the out-maritime word opens also the door to a huge number of risks of intrusion, malwares, trojan horses and other viruses. the well-known SkyFile Family provides an integrated and a high quality service. Very simple to install and to use SkyFile Mail allows the transmission of the daily updates coming from Sophos and the automatic transfer from SkyFile Mail to the SkyFile Anti Virus software installed on the master PC and on the PCs used by the other mariners onboard the vessel, including the crew.

Simplicity is a key factor of success. SkyFile Family provides a full integrated range of services which make the protection onboard the vessel almost transparent for the master.

Of course, the anti-virus engine has to be upgraded from time to time, but not more than some other software used onboard the vessel. Base the differences only on the upgrade of the engine and the necessity to send a CD to the vessel 3 or 4 times a year is not good and not sufficient. we all know that in many cases packages containing various elements, documents and CDs are already sent to the vessels several times a year. So another CD does not make a big difference.

coming back to the volume of data, a lot of efforts have been done by the provider Sophos who has reduced drastically the volume of the daily updates allowing the possibility to protect networks even if the vessel uses a Mini-m or an Iridium. Today speaking about a monthly-volume around 2.5Mbytes is common for the SkyFile Family. I think that speaking about the volume of data based on simply several weeks is not enough. Let's check the full yearly volume of data. thanks to an adapted anti virus service a high quality and high level of protection for less than 1$/day is possible.

Cheers

Permalink Reply by Christos Papalas on October 2, 2011 at 21:26

Jean Marc Duc ,

 

Good Afternoon

I met you years ago in Athens and I was really impressed with your Skyfile Presentation. Actually we are using it since then and we are very happy.

i would like to bring to your attention that you need to improve your customer support feedback and services as a couple of times that we had an issue the replies that were received were .. let say very disappointing. Keep the good work but please improve the feedback to your customers .

Regards

Permalink Reply by Remon van Gijn on October 2, 2011 at 22:51

Hi Jean Marc, some response to your post above. And thanks for joining this discussion btw.
You state some very interesting items.

"what about the quality of the protection?", You make a good point, since the default deployment profile of Sophos OEM installer on-board in mentioned services is set to exclude unwanted applications (that is how av-vendors call malware) + 'Do not remove' as default action. It seems its quite some work when you turn it on.

"Of course, the anti-virus engine has to be upgraded from time to time", Yes indeed, having engine updates to the antivirus is paramount to any antivirus solution, without it as base provisioning the solution is flaud. No argument there.

"but not more than some other software used on-board the vessel.",  ?? there are about 13.000 professional antivirus experts on our globe who dissagree with you on this, the idea is to update often and update complete whenerver possible. So you might want to reconsider this, and please don't take my word for it, go ask. Especially with all those threats out there via Facebook and likes, or having the possibility to surf the web via the Master PC.

"And the necessity to send a CD to the vessel 3 or 4 times a year is not good and not sufficient. we all know that in many cases packages containing various elements, documents and CDs are already sent to the vessels several times a year. So another CD does not make a big difference.", Yes indeed, and like the documentation CDs they end up in the cupboard. Not installed on the Pcs + after having traveled more then 2 weeks often to an agent. How is that for 'up to date'? Again thinking about that mariner surfing away.

"Today speaking about a monthly-volume around 2.5Mbytes is common for the SkyFile", the average sophos data update set used 89Kb/day in 3 to 7 msg spread on the day measured over a complete 1,5 year interval. Assuming that Skyfile does forward all updates the same day that as sophos creates & delivers for the OEM solution, that is a pretty consistent average. Excluding the engine of course, it did 2,63Mb per month to be precise.

To my opinion Antivirus software services are an expert matter, and if possible should be updated every hour on all parts, if it were efficient for costs we would offer it all. Antivirus software though is not enough anymore even, specialized anti-malware is soon to be a standard as well along with complete IT standards. Maritime IT infrastructure needs a standardized building block.

 

I also think Nod32 with Port-IT antivirus (no family) simply included the engine updates every week, and is now @ 1,67Mb per month average for this last year going a full 12 months back.
 
But any individuals reading here are welcome in having this discussion, live with us at EUROPORT MARITIME 2011 : Port-IT Stand 1607

Register today for free!

 

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