Every company needs to protect their data from corruption. By now most every company uses multiple layers of security to prevent viruses from entering their network but as your company grows from small to medium to large then so do your needs for improved service levels. And antivirus software must be capable to support your companies changing environment. Administrators cannot allow their company’s private data to be put at risk of compromise because of limited product functionality.

Here then are several features to expect when considering a new antivirus package.

1. The ability to scan both inbound and outbound email messages should be a feature that is part of your evaluation checkbox list. Most administrators think of only protecting their customers – either all employees or a subset of various company departments – from viruses coming into their company. But administrators should also be looking to protect all email messages that are sent to the outside world. Just as everyone does not want to receive emails which contain viruses it is also just as important to not be the one responsible for inadvertently sending viruses to the outside world. Customers are much less likely to do business with another company if they don’t believe that the company who is selling them either products or services can be trusted to send out email messages that do not contain viruses.
2. Multiple antivirus scanning levels should always be a component of any good antivirus software package. Does the antivirus package support single, double and triple level virus scanning levels?
3. Updates should be at regular and frequent intervals. A choice of five minute, ten minute and fifteen minute intervals can support fine granularities of protection from viruses. Manual or automatic updates should be user selectable and easy to change.
4. Measurable scanning times and visual checks on virus scans in progress can be a great help when the time comes to plan your antivirus checks.
5. File, folder or entire system level scanning should also be a user selectable option. But consider entire system level scanning reserved only for system administrators.
   
6. Warning and alert messages should be sent that include the virus name, actions taken and other details of the email message received. Warning and alert messages should be sent to the originator of the email, the recipient and the system and email administrators. IT administrators and directors always speak of the importance of notification. Being able to receive notification emails whether in the office or mobile is a frequent request I hear from almost all IT departments.
7. Antivirus protection packages should have enough intelligence to block perceived threats which may contain viruses other than the currently well-known viruses. This would involve some type of scoring system that the software is able to use to help it identify potential though as yet unknown viruses from entering your email system through email messages and their accompanying attachments.
8. Support from your antivirus vendor should include all available communication channels – some paid options – such as: chat sessions, email, website Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages, phone and premium support services which extend past normal business hours.
9. Files should be automatically scanned when they are opened as attachments in email messages and also when they are downloaded off the net.
10. More robust antivirus packages will contain firewall software that is can be used to secure your network.
11. Overhead of antivirus protection software should also be known values so that administrators and IT directors can plan for resource allocations. How much cpu and memory is needed for scanning operations? How much is system performance going to be impacted by scanning the entire system? Does the antivirus vendor have any performance benchmarks they can share with your IT department?
12. Antivirus software packages should protect your specific email servers that are using POP, SMTP, IMAP or MAPI email protocols.
13. A quarantine feature that isolates and saves potential virus infected files to a separate quarantine designated folder. This feature allows those files and programs to be recovered at a later date once it has been determined that they do not pose a threat.
14. Smartphone antivirus support should also be another feature that an IT department can use as a checkbox item to determine which products make their short list for a potential purchase.
15. Rules or policies that an administrator can specify to allow pre-approved email addresses or domains should be another feature to look for in a good antivirus package.