McAfee Deploys New SuperDat Updates

By Wil Clark, ACS General Access Lab Manager and Campus Virus Guru

Most of us are familiar with the way virus protection software works. You purchase anti-virus software, install it on your machine and it alerts you when you get a computer virus. And many of us know that the software is only as good as the list of viruses that the software knows about. And so you dutifully download and install new virus definition files periodically. What? You don't update your virus scanning software regularly? Well here is the scoop…

Virus Definition Files

The virus definition files (called Dat files in McAfee VirusScan) tell the virus scanning software about known viruses. The software then compares the files on your computer to the know list of viruses and lets you know if you have a virus. So if you are using Dat files over a month or even a week old then you are not fully protected against possible viruses.

McAfee currently updates its Dat files once a week. Lately it has been adding 30 to 80 new or variant viruses each week. As you can guess, your anti-virus software can become outdated very quickly. As if this was not enough, your software not only needs to know about new viruses it also needs to know how to detect or clean some new viruses. This requires a scan engine update. The scan engine updates happen less frequently than Dat file updates but are no less important.

SuperDat

McAfee has recently implemented steps to make the process of updating both Dat files and the scan engine easy using a file called a SuperDat. If you take care of updating your own copy of McAfee VirusScan you are probably familiar with the updates you can download from McAfee's or UNT's virus Web pages. Now you can download the SuperDat from those same Web sites and be assured of updating both the scan engine and Dat files.

The SuperDat is easy to use. Simply download the file and run it. To run it you generally double click on it. Then the SuperDat wizard walks you through installation. You will typically need to reboot your machine when you are done. During this reboot the files are actually installed. You may receive a message that the Dat files are missing or corrupt. You can ignore this message the first time you reboot after installing the SuperDat. Keep in mind that you will want to contact your network administrator before using this on your UNT computer. But for your personal computer you will want to make this a habit.

SuperDats are released weekly, typically on Wednesdays. You can download a copy from http://www.unt.edu/virus/Distribution This Web page is restricted to the UNT network so you will have to be on campus or use a UNT Internet Services Account to access them.

Stay tuned . . .

Next month we will show you how to automate your virus protection updates.