Lackluster security for small businesses
Editors’ Note: PCMag rates and evaluates all products, including Kaspersky’s, based on their merits and effectiveness, not on any political or other considerations. However, based on the increasing censure and criticism of Kaspersky by US government agencies, foreign agencies, and informed third parties, we can no longer recommend no longer recommend Kaspersky’s products. Because we have not found or been presented with any hard evidence of misdeeds on the part of Kaspersky, however, we are leaving our original review in place for those who wish to decide for themselves. Kaspersky Small Office Security generally begins at $149.99 per year for five users, though as of our August 2019 update to this review it was being temporarily offered at a whopping 40 percent discount, dropping that price to $89.99. That’s a good price and this is, overall, a solid hosted endpoint protection platform that includes many attractive security-oriented features, like file-based anti-malware protections, application control, System Watcher behavior-based anti-malware protections, firewall, email, as well as web and IM anti-malware scanning. There’s even support for mobile platforms, password management, and features you’d more likely see in a consumer product, like Safe Money and ad blocking. But that’s where it turned for me, as perusing this feature list I began to realize that Kaspersky Small Office Security isn’t really a business product. The web-based management console does little more than provide the status of individual systems at a glance and allow the administrator to change basic protection settings, such as application control on or off, and launch scans. Granular settings, such as which applications are allowed or not, require access to the client running on the endpoint. Kaspersky’s emphasis is on simplicity and protection, not on providing business features. As such, it pales in comparison to the innovative policy management mechanics of Editors’ Choice Webroot SecureAnywhere Business Endpoint Protection and will only appeal to a very small business currently running consumer anti-malware and are looking to take a very small step forward. We chose to review Kaspersky Small Office Security because it is the only Kaspersky business product offering a hosted management console. Kaspersky’s on-premises solution, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, contains business-class policy-based endpoint management and reporting features. Kaspersky’s web-based management console is two to three years behind the competition, such as Panda Security Endpoint Protection, Avast Software Premium Business Security, F-Secure Protection Service for Business, and Bitdefender GravityZone Elite—and just about anyone else that calls something a business hosted endpoint protection solution. Installation and User Interface When you deploy Kaspersky Small Office Security, you’re either going to ask your end-users to manage their own endpoint protection, or you’re going to have to touch each machine to do it for them. The depth and breadth of features, information and settings available from the client software is similar to that of Kaspersky consumer products, such as Kaspersky Total Security. However, from the web-based management console you’ll only have access to roughly a dozen settings and three actions. Almost all settings are accessed by navigating to a specific endpoint and clicking on Components and then toggling protections, such as file antivirus, application control, and network attack blocker, on or off. The console lacks the ability to set policy or to work with groups of endpoints so you’ll have to do this on a machine by machine basis. Many of the other endpoint solutions I tested, including McAfee Endpoint Protection Essential for SMB and Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Service offer easily configurable group endpoint management.
