Sophos, Mississppi State University’s new anti-virus software that will replace Symatec, is now available for free to university students, faculty and staff.
Security and Compliance Officer for Information Technology Systems Thomas Ritter said Sophos will extend anti-virus protection to the offices and homes of the MSU community.
“This is essentially a license that allows everyone in the MSU community who’s currently a student or a staff member to have virus protection both at work and at home,” Ritter said. “And this is replacing the existing license we had through Symantec.”
Director of User Services for ITS Stephen Parrott said the virus-type threats, which MSU sees, have changed over the past few years.
“We are seeing an awful lot of new threats, new viruses and very targeted types of things, and frankly, the Symantec didn’t seem to be doing as good of a job as some other tools on the market,” Parrott said. “So when feedback came back from students and feedback came back from our desktop support people that Symantec wasn’t finding the viruses we were seeing, we wanted to change to something different.”
Parrott said ITS has not only seen a rise in viruses which can damage computers, but ITS has also seen a rise in crimeware, viruses used to commit crimes
“One thing we saw was people saying ‘you said my machine was infected and I scanned it with Symantec and I didn’t find anything,'” he said. “Well that is really discouraging to us, so that is one of the reasons we looked at this.”
Ritter said Symantec was not responding to new threats which have come out like ITS would have liked.
“We actually talked about it last year. we just didn’t have the time to get the contract in place,” Ritter said. “So we actually talked to Symantec, nothing was really done; we told them our concerns and it actually got worse.”
Parrott said ITS is very excited about Sophos, but the new anti-virus software may be a culture change for students.
“The way Sophos is licensed, the version for students and home use, the license is good for one year, which is going to require a reinstall for students each year,” Parrott said. “Now initially, what we’ve got out there is good through June 2011, and it became available last Friday for students.”
Senior medical technology major Angel Jones said she had problems on her computer with viruses when she had Symantec anti-virus.
“It didn’t work,” Jones said. “Mostly just when downloading software and programs; Trojans are the main thing and that’s why I deleted it [Symantec] off my account.”
Jones said she now has Norton 2010 on her computer, but plans to get the new anti-virus software.
“Anything to help the students is good because most of us can’t afford getting Norton or other software because school tuition is already so high,” she said.
Parrott said installing and downloading the new anti-virus will take approximately five minutes depending on your computer.
“If they [students] leave campus and still have Symantec, from June until they get back, they will have a period there when they will not be getting the updates,” he said.