Hello my fellow cyber knights, I’m currently studying to get my MCSA and I was wondering what is the best anti-virus program to use with server 2012 R2? Or is an anti-virus even recommended to be used on severs? Oh and does anyone know of any good study guides/Materials to prepare for the MCSA exam?
My own view is to secure the endpoints and not EVERY server. However few companies do this and most use an Enterprise AV suite such as offers by Sophos.
If you must run AV on each server think carefully about what it does and set filtering rules to exclude essential files e.g. .mdf and .ldf files on a SQL Server.
Generally speaking Microsofts own AV and Firewalls are enough.
The built in firewall is useless, so are most av software. Even enterprise av software nowadays is used for filtering device input, phishing e-mails, etc. or avoiding easily detectable malware/adware and not serious stuff.
If you are worried about being attacked put it behind a dedicated firewall and have some kind of controlled connection such as vpn or site to site tunnel. Make use of group policy to restrict user rights.
As for your MCSA test just study the questions on previous tests. Microsoft is lazy and the questions are generally the same every year.
Symantec Endpoint is the only AV I'd recommend for any server environment.
hey thanks you guys, that was a lot of help.
Couple that with a HIPS on the server and each client. you should be golden.