Review: Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Advanced

Many small business security solutions are essentially managed anti-malware/anti-spyware and firewall agents. They don't offer much more than this core level of protection. Not so with Trend Micro, which adds in several features normally reserved for consumer suites, as well as a few unique features specifically designed for small businesses.

It also happens to be very easy to set up and manage - we had it up and running in minutes. As with McAfee's small business solution, clients can be managed through a Web interface. Trend Micro doesn't host the management server like McAfee does, but the installer sets up an Apache server. You don't need to run an exotic server OS - it will install happily in a regular Windows Vista or XP system.

Given the administration is Web based, it's easy to set it up for remote access (perhaps by an off-site administrator). It also allows simple deployment of the client agent - they can quickly and painlessly install it themselves from a web link.

Managing clients through the Web interface is intuitive and you can control the full spectrum of options, including whether to allow local settings changes. It doesn't bombard you with jargon, and if you've had any experience with consumer suites, you should be able to leap right into the administration interface.

The only downside is that the management server and Apache are a little draining on system resources. On our test system they took more than 70MB of system memory to run.

The client agents are remarkably capable. Of course they do anti-malware and anti-spyware as well as firewall protection, but they also support local spam filtering and protection from malicious Web sites.

We were particularly taken with "Behaviour Monitoring" that restricts the changes a client can make - installing new programs, modifying the shell, changing security settings and more. There's also a unique tool that prevents modifications to QuickBooks.

On the server side, Trend Micro comes with an Exchange plug-in that provides messaging security and anti-spam - though with client-side protection this may not be strictly necessary.

The Trend Micro solution is easy to use, easy to install and very powerful. Its simple Web-based administration and small business features make it perfect to meet the needs of those businesses. It comes highly recommended.