VIPRE vs. Webroot Features Comparison€¦ · VIPRE VS. WEBROOT FEATURES COMPARISON PAGE 10 Access to Help for Users Webroot has one of the most advanced help sites that we have encountered,

VIPRE VS. WEBROOT FEATURES COMPARISON

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VIPRE vs. Webroot Features

Comparison

The following report was conducted by the Tech Writers Bureau staff of

technology reviewers, editors and writers during the closed beta period for VIPRE

Endpoint Security – Cloud Edition during September of 2017. It is compared with

Webroot SecureAnywhere.

Features present in both products were directly compared, with emphasis on the

user interface. Where applicable, an advantage designation was applied to one

product or the other.

For more information about The Tech Writers Bureau:

www.techwritersbureau.com

http://www.techwritersbureau.com/

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http://www.techwritersbureau.com


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Quick Start

The VIPRE cloud welcome page gets right down to business, with tasks for inexperienced or

new users highlighted in blue. This would appeal to less technical users, perhaps in the SMB

space, who are not familiar with setting up security at this level.

Webroot does a few good things too in their splash screen. System alerts are displayed right at

the top of the screen for one. This may be a slightly more advanced welcome screen for users,

however, the presence of the customer support button and the Webroot community button are

nice additions and easy to find.

Advantage: VIPRE


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Policy Deployment

Quite frankly, the Webroot policy deployment is a bit of a mess. It’s clear that they were trying

to use colors to make the interface more simplistic, but everything is grouped together in odd

ways, and with odd color choices like orange, making it difficult for advanced users to find the

specific policy they want to edit, and likely confusing novice users trying to figure out the best

settings to protect their enterprise.

One thing they do well is adding a section on heuristics-based protection for physical devices,

and allowing administrators to break it down by device type, such as CD-ROM, USB or network.


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Lots of organizations, including SMBs, are concerned about removable media, having a user

plug an infected smartphone into a USB port to charge and accidentally transferring malware

into the network that way. Recently, that happened to New York state Goodwill stores and it was

a mess. Businesses don’t want to lock down their USB ports all together, so this might be an

effective way to protect them from anything harmful happening while keeping their

functionality. Calling out USB and other peripheral protections in the policy setup interface, and

then locking it down using heuristic scanning, is a nice perk for Webroot.

VIPRE breaks down policy types into well-defined categories. Instead of a confusing multi-color

scheme, the box is either filled in for active, or left hollow and open if disabled. This makes

selecting the appropriate action, to quarantine, delete, report or ignore, very easy to set and audit.

Also, this interface would work for color blind individuals and would be Section 508 compliant

for government users – a feature VIPRE might want to tout.

Creating a policy from scratch is also easy, using the clone policy function from the top-level

interface in that category, and then modifying it as needed or desired for the group in question.

Here too, the interface shines, as it is extremely easy to tell which policy has been applied to

which endpoint.

Advantage: VIPRE


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User and Admin Management Section 1

Adding administrators is something that both programs accomplish fairly easily. However, they

do go about it in different ways. VIPRE elects for simplicity, as is their theme. Adding a new

user takes place with a single click, and a user can either be an Admin (super-user) or an Analyst.

The Analyst can see almost everything, but is not allowed to set policies and is restricted from a

few other tasks, like deleting devices from the console. The Analyst role would presumably be

given to someone assigned to watch over security and perhaps respond to events, but not the

architect of the security defenses – a required role in most organizations. Also, the new Analyst,

or Admin, gets a friendly e-mail invite and an automatic login link, which is very nice.

Webroot handles this process slightly differently. Every user is technically an Admin there, but

then you can precisely define their responsibilities and roles in the system. For example, for the

categories of endpoint protection, mobile protection and a third category called general which

effects the entire program, Webroot allows users to be assigned either a Basic role, giving

limited access to consoles and account settings or a full Admin role, giving full access to all

keycodes, users and account settings for that part of Webroot SecureAnywhere.

Both methods essentially do the same thing. Webroot is more complicated; however, the

program is divided up into component parts, allowing for more precise control and different

levels of admin users.

Advantage: VIPRE, given the target audience


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User and Admin Management Section 2

Tested using an hour of inactivity, the VIPRE system logged an admin user out of the system.

The Webroot program did not seem to have that feature, as we were still logged in after another

hour.

Locking down administration consoles is a great idea, preventing an attack by someone who

walks up to an active terminal when the admin is away at lunch or gone for the day without first

logging out.

Advantage: VIPRE, Clearly


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Deploying Agents to Endpoints

The Webroot program allows manual installation of files, with an administrator using sneaker-

net presumably, or an e-mail invite where the user is asked to make the installation. It also allows

for MSI deployments or Windows Group Policy Objects.

Given that the target audience for these products are likely smaller enterprises with fewer than

250 clients, the simpler, manual or user assisted option is more likely going to be used. Here,

Webroot adds more complexity than needed. It is so concerned with ensuring that license keys

are valid, that it requires a complicated command line to be run that contains the main key. For

example: wsasme.exe/key=xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx /group=1190468063743258852 /silent.

Thereafter, the agent will need to be configured using the main interface, although he connection

is, finally, automatic.

VIPRE allows for those same options, though only the simple deployment was obvious from the

beta interface. In that, VIPRE allows for one of two installation methods, a manual installation,

again with an administrator having to walk around to each device that needs protected, and an

email invite which can be sent to users. Users can be tracked in terms of adoption rates for the

agent, yet there is no way to force a user to act.

The VIPRE program’s agents are self-contained executable files, and unlike the Webroot agents,

smartly contain all the keys and information needed so that users just need to click and run it.

Thereafter, protected endpoints appear in the main console. Another nice touch is that specific

agents can be generated based on policies. This was incredibly easy, simply selecting the

generate option and choosing the specific policy that the endpoint should follow, in this case a

custom design that included firewall and IDS rules.

Advantage: VIPRE


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Report and Threat Handling

The Webroot program has a standard, console interface for threat handling activities. Active

threats appear in red on the left side of the screen, inside the dashboard or on the home page

splash screen. This is a good feature because it shows at a glance if there is a threat anywhere in

the network. It also does a respectable job of explaining what level of threat has been

encountered and the recommended action to take regarding it. There is also a nice link from the

splash screen to the remediation engine, bypassing everything else, including the main

dashboard. So, users can jump right into the problem.

For VIPRE, threats appear on the main dashboard, but not on the splash screen. The difference is

only one click, but for inexperienced users, they may not know to go into the dashboard if their

main splash screen does not denote a problem. Thereafter, handing threats is extremely

straightforward.


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Advantage: Tie


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Access to Help for Users

Webroot has one of the most advanced help sites that we have encountered, divided up into three

categories, a real boon for a program aimed at SMBs and less technical audiences.

At the first level, Webroot offers 11 technical guides and tutorials that cover every aspect of the

program.

Once a guide is selected, a new web-based interface is loaded. All guides are online. The guides

themselves are very well written, allowing users to zero in on the exact problem that they are

encountering, or the feature that they need more information about.

The guides go well beyond just explaining the process. Backed with easy to understand graphics,

they show a user how to do almost any task they need to perform, even circling the areas that

they need to examine or select within the program windows.


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As you can see above, the guide graphically shows what will happen when a button is clicked,

eliminating any surprises for the user. And, there are links that take a user back into the program,

so they can work with their newfound knowledge and keep the guide open for reference.

At level two, Webroot offers a keyword search interface and an “ask the expert feature” which is

actually an expert system disguised to look like AI. Articles found from either interface come

from the aforementioned documentation tutorials, or from the pool of community-created

documents and content.


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Finally, Webroot offers a separate sales help interface. These questions mostly regard

subscriptions and licenses, though a few might be generally helpful to users like how to transfer

a licensed admin key from one PC to another. While this is probably the least helpful in terms of

assisting the user, it’s very likely that Webroot uses this help area to connect potential buyers

evaluating the product with their sales force, which is always a good thing for a company.

VIPRE support documentation was in development at the time of the review. So unable to

review.


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Advantage: Webroot


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Dashboard Interface

VIPRE has one of the cleanest interfaces that we have encountered in years. It does not try to go

crazy with fancy colors, and there are no ringing bells or blinking red lights to indicate threats. It

is minimalistic yet completely functional, a nearly perfect design.

As an additional advantage, because there are no layered tabs or embedded windows, it should

be considered Section 508 compliant for disabled users, a requirement of any program trying to

gain users within the federal and many state and local governments.

Webroot on the other hand has a more SIEM-like traditional look. Advanced users will have no

problem navigating the Webroot console and dashboard, but novices may be intimidated.

Webroot makes up for this somewhat with great documentation, but for very basic users, the

ability to choose from, at most, five different button choices under VIPRE, is likely going to be

far less intimidating.

Advantage: VIPRE


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Product Score Card:

Documents

VIPRE vs. Webroot Features Comparison€¦ · VIPRE VS. WEBROOT FEATURES COMPARISON PAGE 10 Access to Help for Users Webroot has one of the most advanced help sites that we have encountered,