AVG CloudCare Best Practices

AVG is antivirus software and AVG Cloud Care is the website that helps to manage installations, threats, updates, and scans. AVG Cloud Care organizes various AVG installations by “Customers”. Each Customer can also have “Groups”. Templates can be assigned to Customers and Alerts can be assigned to groups. Devices are the names of computers. Devices can be assigned to Groups. Alerts can also be assigned to Devices.

AVG CloudCare

Managing Templates

There are two types of templates. One is at the “Partner” level and the other at the “Customer” level. The Partner template does not propagate down to the Customer level. Any changes made at the Partner level template must be manually copied and applied to the Customer level on a per-Customer basis.

As much effort as possible should be taken to keep the Partner template up to date so that it can be used to apply to new Customers when they are first set up. It can also be applied to existing Customers by saving the Partner template and applying it to an existing Customer in the Policies tab.

Managing Policies

There are several top-level categories for policies, but the ones we use for Anti-virus are General and Antivirus. The General policy should “Require confirmation from the user” and update every 4 hours.

The Antivirus policy’s Advanced Settings should, “Enable Resident Shield”, “Ask before removing threat”, “Report Potentially Unwanted Programs and Spyware threats”, “Scan boot sector of removable media”, “Scan files referred in registry”, “Enable Instant Messaging and P2P downloads protection”. Under “E-mail Scanner”, “Scan incoming messages” and “Scan outgoing messages” should be unchecked.

Managing Exceptions

  1. Log into the CloudCare Portal
  2. On the Policies tab, select the policy you would like to manage.
  3. Click on Anti-Virus to expand the menu.
  4. Go to the Exceptions tab.
  5. Click Add Exception if adding a new exception. If editing an existing exception, select the object to edit and click the Edit or Remove button.
  6. Select the exception type; i.e., file, folder, or URL.
  7. Enter the path or URL of the exception. If it’s a username-specific folder, choose “Any Location”.
  8. Choose the components for the exception to apply to.
  9. Click Close and Save.

The global, partner Policies do not override or propagating down to customer policies. They only copy when a NEW customer is created. This means every customer needs touched every time a global policy change is made.

The “partner” policy is a template. This police is used when a “New” customer is created this is the default policy for the new customer. This does not propagate down to existing customers only to newly created customers.

AVG Support

866-402-9806 AVG CloudCare Support
828-466-5757 Support for Business
866-833-5727 ext. 417. This will take you to the tech support operator. She will create a case for the techs and transfer you to the next available tech. You can also email cloudcaresupport@avg.com

Tools to Use

Responding to Threats

Determine if the threat can or should be excluded. You can use a tool like Virus Total to determine if the file is actually a virus. If you are completely sure, first exclude the file at the Customer level. If that doesn’t work and it is a very-specific folder, then exclude it at the folder level. If the file is not currently infected, but could be in the future, exclude the file at the device-level on the actual computer with the issue, NOT in the AVG Cloud Care website.

Marketing Email Response to Virus Alert

There may be a time when you’ll need to respond directly to a client before making a change to their computer. Use the following template as a guide:

Dear [Name],

We are all aware of the changing threats on the Internet; identity theft, viruses, adware, data theft and many more. To address these challenges we are, and have been upgrading our desktop management tools. However, we now detect and report on a variety of web browser plug-ins that are not a specific threat, but are being reported as potential issues. Example, many web sites would like to have their search tool on your Web Browser to drive traffic to their advertisers.

These are commonly installed if you are not careful where you click. Install Adobe Reader, and if you’re not careful, they’ll install Google Chrome Browser. Everyone wants to slip something on your PC.

Please review the following file to determine if you would like us to:

A) Allow this threat to remain on your PC
B) Allow us to assist you with removing the threat

Threat: [Ex. “Friends Checker” toolbar.]

How to delete threats remotely in AVG Cloudcare?

If the threat had been moved to the virus vault, then yes, you can remove it from the device’s virus vault…

  • Devices
  • Click on device name
  • Under Device Details, click on “Virus Vault”

However, if the file is bigger than 4MB, or if AVG can’t remove the file due to blocked access, you may need to attempt manual removal. Also, modifying the following policy settings will change how AVG handles detected threats, by eliminating asking the end user to automatically moving all detected threats to the virus vault so you, the administrator, can decide if the threat is legitimate or a false positive…

  1. Policies tab
  2. Select policy group name, such as “Default”
  3. AntiVirus tab
  4. Advanced Settings
  5. Uncheck the “Ask me before removing threat” box
  6. ID-Protect tab
  7. Select “Automatically quarantine detected threats”
  8. Save

If you have more issues or questions, please call us at 1-866-833-5727, Monday through Friday, from 8 AM to 8 PM Eastern; and have your AVG case number ready when you call.

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