In looking for ways to more closely align with the university’s priorities and the president’s directives to find cost savings within existing budgets, Information Technology Services (ITS) found an opportunity when the current campus-wide contract for Symantec anti-virus and firewall software came up for renewal. In May, 2009, ITS chose to take advantage of tools available through the Microsoft Campus Agreement and open source products and will not renew the Symantec agreement. This change saves the university hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next two years and avoids more costs in future years. Although this change poses some inconvenience for students, faculty and staff to swap out software by September 23, 2009, the new software provides a better service for the campus and significant cost savings.
The Microsoft Campus Agreement, renewed in fall 2008, now includes Microsoft Forefront Client Security, a comprehensive anti-virus program. For the Mac OS X platform, ClamXav is a well-respected open source product. ITS will provide both products for end users on BevoWare. Additional scripts and Forefront components are provided to technical staff to deploy and manage anti-virus software for desktops, servers and Microsoft enterprise software used on campus, including Exchange and SharePoint.
Technical staff on campus are developing schedules for converting the computers they manage to new anti-virus software. Faculty and staff whose computers are managed by technical staff should work with their technical staff to have their managed machines updated.
Students, faculty and staff need to take action to update their computers if they currently use Symantec/Norton Anti-virus software obtained from BevoWare on any of the following computers:
- A personal computer (Mac or Windows)
- A work computer (Mac or Windows) if they are usually the person who installs software on it
Users can select the appropriate instructions for their operating system.
When ITS executive management looked at the cost of extending the contract and changes to in the area of security software, they felt it made sense to switch. Cam Beasley, University Information Security Officer and interim Director of ITS User Services, says, “We found that Forefront and ClamXav performed as well as, if not better at times, than Symantec when evaluated against our collection of malcode—many of which are very new specimens that tend to go undetected by most major anti-virus vendors for a number of days.”
Anyone who installed Symantec under the campus license from BevoWare over the last 6 years should uninstall the software and install one of the new options (or another product of their choosing) no later than September 23, 2009. Although Symantec would continue to operate, the product will no longer be updated with new anti-virus definitions, which is the core of any anti-virus software. Without those updates, sometimes provided multiple times per day, anti-virus software quickly becomes useless, exposing users to computer viruses and putting the campus computing environment at risk.
Some versions of Symantec also provided firewall software for users. With improvements to firewall software built into modern operating systems, the Information Security Office now recommends using the built-in options in most cases, rather than spending money on a third-party product.
Computers connecting to the campus network must have anti-virus software installed. The Information Resources Use and Security Policy specifies that “all systems connecting to the university network, whether owned by the university or not, must install and enable current virus protection software.”
ITS is responsible for negotiating large software site licenses for campus. The Symantec license, which has provided anti-virus and anti-malware software for the last 6 years under the brand names Symantec and Norton, expires on September 23, 2009.
