User:Rewood/The Pitfalls of Norton Antivirus 2001/2002

I thought I'd point out a problem some of you have been running into. If you computer is on the ECEW2K domain, you can ignore this. Membership in the domain forces the newest version of Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition upon the machine.

Many of you have computers which have come to you with Norton Antivirus 2001 or 2002 (perhaps even Norton SystemWorks) preinstalled on it. The natural assumption would be that this would cover you from all virus attacks. This would be incorrect (While I'm thinking about it, if you have Dr. Solomon or perhaps McAfee, I'd suggest you also replace it with the software below).

These "free" versions of Norton have an expiration date on their "LiveUpdate" - the utility that gets the newest virus definitions.

Here's the quick 5 second explanation on virus definitions. The world is covered with new viruses everyday. The virus definitions "define" how the viruses should look to Norton as it scans. Without up to date definitions, Norton is blind to the virus that came out last week. So while Norton could be scanning your harddrive every day, if your virus definitions are from 1998 (and I have seen this recently), it isn't going to find/prevent much.

How to find out the date of your definitions? Open Norton from either the icon on the bottom right of your screen, or go through the Start menu. Most versions of Norton will display the date right up front. If you can't find it, hey, that's one more reason to get the newest version on there.

So, other than joining the domain, how do you go about protecting yourself?

First go ahead and remove your current version of Norton Antivirus: Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. Find Norton Antivirus, Remove Norton Antivirus.

Restart the computer.

Then proceed over to the WolfTech site (www.wolftech.ncsu.edu - that's me and my guys). Click on the "Downloads" link, click on the Virus Software category, and follow the links from there. You'll need to provide your UNITY/EOS userid and passwd, but then you'll have access to our site licensed version of Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition. NCSU provides Norton Antivirus for Windows NT/2000/XP and Windows 95/98/ME.

For computers on campus, be sure to select the "managed" version of the install.

I would highly recommend that you install the off-campus edition on your home computers. The site license covers all members of the NCSU community both here and at home. The "off-campus" edition is also referred to as the "unmanaged" version.

The unmanaged installation is the same program as the managed distribution, however, the client works much more like the stand-alone product. Virus definition updates only happen when the user initiates them and there is no communication with the NC State Norton server infrastructure. This installation choice is designed for users who want more control over how their virus software works and when it updates its virus definitions.

Cheers, Dan

Addendum:

The question arose: "How do you update the virus definitions on the unmanaged version?"

No prob, just open Norton, and click on LiveUpdate. Follow the prompts from there...