One thing critical to a computer network is antivirus, and that is especially true inside a school network. There are a lot of good antivirus products out there. I know people running NOD32, Trend, Symantec, and Sophos inside their school networks. I've also heard people talk about switching to a free product to save a little bit of money. But there's one big gotcha, most of the products advertised as "free" are only free for home use. If you look at AVG and Microsoft's latest Security Essentials they're both free, but only on home computers. To get free on school computer you've got to look elsewhere and that's where you'll find Fortinet's FortiClient. It's free, free on school computers, even free on computers in commercial offices. There's no nag screens, no "we'll find it but you'll have to pay us to remove it", no expiration date. So where's the catch? There's no centralized management. You might argue that not being able to centrally manage your antivirus is not very practical, but with shrinking budgets it's a lot better than loading an illegal copy of something else, and it sure beats not having anything at all.
I haven't actually had a chance to really test it out. I was able to run it up against some of the tools in the USB Switchblade kit. I know they're a bit dated but it didn't have a problem catching them, so that's a good start. I'll test it against some newer threats and see how well it does. I'll post back when I know how well it works. If you've already tried it out feel free to leave a comment and let us all know what you think.
Here's the link:
http://www.forticlient.com/
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