Installing Sophos Anti-Virus 9

Sophos Anti-Virus is Stanford's site-licensed anti-malware software. It can protect your computer against viruses, adware/spyware, and other malicious software.

Sophos Anti-Virus updates itself automatically so your version of the program and the virus definitions are always up-to-date.

Install Sophos Anti-Virus

1. Download the Sophos Anti-Virus installer.
2. Double-click the installer icon in the disk image window.
3. When the Welcome window is displayed, click Continue.
   
   
4. Click Install to start the installation.
   
   
5. Enter your administrator name and password for your computer and then click Install Software.
   
   
6. When the software has finished installing, click Close.
   
   
7. The Sophos Anti-Virus icon will appear in the upper-right corner of your screen.

Note: After installing Sophos Anti-Virus you should scan your hard drives(s).

Scan your computer

Sophos Anti-Virus scans each file as it it accessed so it is usually not necessary to regularly scan your hard drive. However, it is recommended that you scan your hard drive after installing Sophos in order to detect any viruses and malware that may already exist on your computer.

1. Click the Sophos icon in the upper-right area of your screen and then click Scan This Mac.
   
   
2. A window opens that shows the progress of the scan.
   
   

Set preferences

Sophos Anti-Virus is preconfigured with the optimal settings for on-access scanning in the Stanford environment. However, you can change the settings for your situation if you wish.

To change the default preferences:

1. Click the Sophos icon in the upper-right area of your screen and then click Open Preferences.
2. Click the lock in the bottom left of the screen if it is closed and then make the changes you wish to the default preferences.
   
   
    

Excluding Thunderbird files from on-access scanning

The Sophos Anti-Virus installer checks for directories containing Thunderbird data files and will exclude them from the On-access scan to prevent significant slowdowns when reading your mail (the mailbox format Thunderbird uses is susceptible to this problem; the format Apple Mail uses is not).

After installing Sophos, if you install Thunderbird and create a new profile or if a new user begins using Thunderbird, you can manually create this exception.

Make the Library folder visible

The user Library folder is  hidden by default. You need to unhide it to see the the folders containing the Thunderbird files you want to exclude. 

1. Open the Applications folder and navigate to Utilities > Terminal.
2. In Terminal, type chflags nohidden ~/Library and and then press ENTER.
   
   
   
   Note: To re-enable this feature, run the chflags hidden ~/Library command in Terminal.

Exclude Thunderbird folders from on-access scanning

1. Click the Sophos icon in the top right of your screen and then click Open Preferences.
2. Click On Access in the toolbar. In the On-access Scanning panel, click the Excluded Items tab.
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3. Click the lock in the lower left of the window if it is closed.
4. Enter your administrator name and password for the computer and then click OK.
   
   
    
5. Click the add button to add a folder to the list of excluded items.
6. The following table shows the folders that should be excluded for Thunderbird. Navigate to a folder you want to exclude.
    

   Protocol	Location of Folder(s) to Exclude
   Thunderbird POP	/Users/user_name/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail
   Thunderbird IMAP	/Users/user_name/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail /Users/user_name/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/ImapMail
   Note: In the Thunderbird path, xxxxxxxx is used to denote random characters.

7. When you have located the folder, select it and then click Choose.
   
   
8. If you are using IMAP and need to to exclude another folder, click the add button in the On-access Scanning window, navigate to the folder you want to exclude, and click Open.
9. After you have selected all the folders you want to exclude, click the lock in the lower left of the window to prevent further changes.
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10. Close the Sophos Anti-Virus Preferences window.