The reasons for choosing Kaspersky were the great reputation and the admin console.
Any other suggestions for protecting a mix of Windows workstations and servers?
>Any other suggestions for protecting a mix of Windows workstations and servers?
I don't understand your line of thinking. Why choose something else when Google's working hard on making sure Kaspersky works properly? It's not like any other solution you pick will be bug-free. At least now, after Google's hard work and heavy 'tire-kicking', you can be safer that major bugs in Kaspersky are being taken care of.
Microsoft Defender is the only product that Tavis didn't repeatedly knock over in a matter of days. If I were to venture a guess as to why, I'd say that Microsoft's incentives are more in line with their users here. They understand secure development process and aren't selling Defender. So, they're starting from a better security baseline and have no reason to add tons of attack surface in the name of market differentiators.
Not in the majority of the cases. Widespread attacks from botnets very rarely use zero days. Unless you company is special enough to be targeted, most of your attacks will not be zero days.
But to be honest I'm not sure how good Sophos is under the hood, either. They have a good reputation, but we have only been running it for a short while.