Now, I gave it that rating because it's a handy tool for diagnosing issues. Quarantining them, and most of the time, it does fix the problem. Though with rootkits, it's been hit or miss, and sometimes perfectly valid software gets flagged erroneously. However, once you've run it, it tends to run continuously, consuming far too many resources and being a real pain to uninstall, sometimes even causing issues.
In large deployments, I have found Microsoft Forefront to be very effective at combating the majority of threats faced by our users. It provides the base platform for catching threats that would otherwise threaten our users and their data. If you have an environment that is under constant malware threat, then a secondary program may be needed as required.
The software is very good at working in the background without interfering with the end user in any way, there has never been a complaint of slowness on the machines or any excessive scan times because the users are unaware of it.
Malwarebytes management console is a very nice interface that tracks all of the machines on the network and shows which one is online, offline, up to date, out of date etc. I can also push installation packages to new machines without end user interaction.
Malwarebytes does extremely well what it is made to do, and that is to stop malware. Never once has any infection made it past malwarebytes to harm an end user machine.
Malwarebytes is always up to date, definitions are downloaded on a daily basis, you can trust that your software is current and you are being protected from the latest threats out there.
As of 2021 Q1, I have had issues with upgrading Malwarebytes installs on endpoints from the admin console. On about 30%-50% of the endpoints, I have to manually uninstall them, reboot, and reinstall Malwarebytes. This is a relatively new feature over the last year that Malwarebytes has done that let's you control updating the endpoint agent.
The last time we renewed Malwarebytes, we renewed for a 3 year renewal. That should describe the confidence we have in the product. Plus the cost savings impact year after year.
Usability-wise, it's pretty good, and it gets the job done. But once that's finished, the nags, the pop-ups, and the fact that it slows older systems down recklessly really cost it rating points. It becomes a clutter, and one of the first things we check when we receive reports that a PC is slow is whether it's running malware. Once we uninstall it, the PC is usually easily 40-50% faster. That's too much in the way of resources for something that wants to always run in the background.
I honestly haven't needed support for Malwarebytes because I haven't had any problems with it, whatsoever. I am giving it a 9 rating because I haven't actually had an encounter or experience with customer service or support, so it's hard to rate the actual support team since I've never had the privilege of coming into contact with them.
Malwarebytes seems to lead the industry in customer focus. Their support team is superior. The breadth of services they offer is a major factor along with their roadmap for the future. I believe the update process is one of the easiest I've experienced with major software platforms. You may be able to receive a discount if you purchase through a reseller / IT vendor.
The biggest advantage that MSF and SCEP provide over Norton is: One: Far less client overhead required. Both Norton and McAfee are highly intensive client side when in use. Two: We've had far better luck using the Microsoft system with its detection capabilities, versus the others. Three: It is tied right into the Microsoft updating system, which provides central updating capabilities of av/mal/windows updates.
