RE: Why NOT to disable Real Time Antivirus on Servers

["Nick Duda" <nduda () VistaPrint com>]

Classic case would be that a new Virus gets released and your enviroment doesnt have the DAT's yet , or the AV vendor 
hasnt released them. Someone gets an email, opens it and executes the attached exe file. Lets say this thing spreads on 
the LAN and infects everything, or targets servers and file shares. You then get the DAT file, update everything with 
AV and the problem starts to go away. 
 
Whooops, your servers dont have AV, they are infected.

        -----Original Message----- 
        From: george.peek () gmx net [mailto:george.peek () gmx net] 
        Sent: Wed 11/2/2005 12:34 PM 
        To: security-basics () securityfocus com 
        Cc: 
        Subject: Why NOT to disable Real Time Antivirus on Servers
        
        

        Greetings,
        
        An Engineer and I are having an argument about keeping Real Time Antivirus disabled on servers.
        
        His point is keeping Real Time Antivirus Enabled on servers such as the Exchange Server takes a huge 
performance hit on the server.
        
        My argument is that keeping real time antivirus software disabled defeats the purpose of PREVENTING a server 
from being infected in the first place. Once it is infected, it is all too late already. The antivirus software is 
enabled on the workstations.
        
        He argues that since all of the workstations have the antivirus enabled, then there is no way for the virus to 
get in.
        
        Mine argument that a virus can still get in through other means. I need examples and case studies to refer to.
        
        I would like to find different case studies or scenarios where the real time antivirus was disabled on the 
servers, enabled on the PCs, and the company still got infected. Also, would like to find solutions to enabling real 
time scan and stream lining it so it does not affect the Exchange Server as bad.
        
        Would someone point me in the right direction or post potential case studies.
        
        Please post or email me.
        
        George.peek () gmx net
        
        Thank You