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Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
Director, User Services and Network Applications
joe@uoregon.edu
Although the University of Oregon has traditionally site-licensed the retail edition of Symantec Norton Antivirus (NAV), it is switching to McAfee's antivirus product for the 2005-6 academic year.
Previously, the UO had a somewhat unusual relationship with Symantec. According to Symantec, the UO was the only school in the world with a site license for the retail version of NAV. This year Symantec indicated that it wanted to cease supporting site-licensed use of that product and was unwilling to continue offering it to us.
This meant that, quite aside from any other considerations, it was appropriate to look at other antivirus products.
While we could have moved from the retail edition to the corporate edition of Symantec, the corporate edition was a poor fit for the UO's decentralized PC environment.
In addition, Symantec had changed its pricing structure to encourage customers to purchase a security product bundle instead of Norton Antivirus alone. This would have made moving to the corporate edition considerably more expensive.
Given these circumstances, we took the opportunity to review our antivirus alternatives. Naturally our first objective was to determine which antivirus product did the best job of detecting and removing viruses.
Putting products to the test. To address that question, we obtained a customer's permission to use his virus-infected system as a test case and made a reference copy of his system. We then tested different antivirus products on the infected system. After testing one product, we returned the laptop to its original infected state and tried the next product.
It was not unusual for antivirus products to find viruses that they couldn't remove--with one noteworthy exception: McAfee. McAfee was able to remove every virus it found.
Researching peer universities. When making a decision such as this, it is sometimes helpful to see what other schools are doing. With that in mind, we looked at antivirus-related web pages for other Internet2 member universities. Of the 177 schools that had published information on their antivirus product choice at the time of our study, just over 50% used Norton and just under 40% used McAfee. All other antivirus vendors' products were employed at half a dozen sites or less.
Other considerations. We also looked at things such as ease of use, product speed, support options, how well the product integrated with the operating system and applications, how virus definition updates were handled, and a range of other factors.
After taking all this into account, we concluded that McAfee would be the best solution for the university for the 2005-6 academic year. In moving to McAfee, we join a list of other McAfee university customers that includes Arizona State, Chicago, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Hawaii, Harvard, Idaho State, Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, MIT, Montana State, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico State, North Dakota, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Rutgers, South Carolina, Texas, Utah State, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Utah, and Washington.
For UO students: Student Windows PC users will be using McAfee Virus Scan (PC) under the Student Use Option, along with McAfee Anti-Spyware (PC) under the Student Use Option. Student Mac Users will be using McAfee Virex under the Student Use Option.
For faculty and staff: UO faculty and staff will be using McAfee Active Virus Scan Suite PerpetualPlus License, plus McAfee Anti-Spyware PerpetualPlus for Windows or McAfee Virex PerpetualPlus for the Mac, including the home use option for these products.
If your department centrally manages all of its desktop computers, your department's technical support staff will likely already have access to McAfee--and in fact you may already be running it. (Departmental staff who still need to arrange access to McAfee software for managed desktop installation should contact Microcomputer Services, 346-4412.)
CD copies of the Windows McAfee products for individual installation should be available for UO faculty, UO students, and UO staff at normal Duckware distribution locations* by mid-July. To get a copy of McAfee you will need to show a current UO ID card.
We are also working on an online download option that requires logging in using your UO user ID. Check http://micro.uoregon.edu/av/ for more information about the status of that alternative.
CD copies of Virex for the Mac will be available shortly, upon conclusion of McAfee's final beta testing of a Tiger-compatible version.
Q I don't want to change to McAfee! Can I stay with Norton?
A The university's license for Norton expires July 27th, and we will not be supporting that product beyond that time. McAfee is the product we now have licensed as a replacement. We strongly urge you to give McAfee a chance. We think you'll really like it.
That said, you do always have the option of individually licensing an alternative product. (Central funding and support will not be available for antivirus products other than McAfee, however.)
Q Can I share my copy of McAfee software with a few friends?
A No. McAfee, like all commercial antivirus software, is a copyrighted product. The university has purchased a fixed number of licenses for McAfee and is carefully tracking usage to ensure that we stay within our licensed limits. We need your cooperation to make sure that we do so--and that includes not making McAfee available to anyone other than UO faculty, UO students, and UO staff.