McAfee Scans the Campus

By Wil Clark, ACS General Access Lab Manager

You probably know by now that UNT switched Virus Scanning software. As was reported in the July, 1998 Benchmarks Online, a subcommittee of the Distributed Computing Support Management Team evaluated major virus protection software and selected McAfee VirusScan Security Suite as the replacement for Command Software’s Command AntiVirus (F-Prot).

Advantages of the VirusScan Suite

McAfee VirusScan Security Suite allows a few advantages over our previous virus protection software, Command AntiVirus. The first and most obvious advantage is the Macintosh client. Until the adoption of McAfee, Macintosh users had to purchase virus protection software not part of the campus site license. Command AntiVirus does not offer a Macintosh product.

Now Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS users will be able to get virus protection for home computers at no cost while associated with UNT. Before UNT only had free virus protection for Microsoft Windows and DOS.

Other advantages are less obvious but just as important. For example, computing support staff will have only one virus protection package to learn and support. Software distribution and virus data files will be more automated.

McAfee Virus Scan is featured and available for download (to the unt.edu domain only) from the UNT Virus Information and Resources Web Site, http://www.unt.edu/virus/. It will also be distributed on the next release of the Internet Software Suite CD-ROM, available at the UNT Bookstore in January 1999.

If you have any questions regarding McAfee Virus Scan or virus protection in general you can contact me via E-mail at wilc@unt.edu or at the Computing Center, 940-565-4808.n