New Anti-Malware Service to Replace Sophos

During the summer and early autumn, University IT will be deploying an upgrade to Stanford's Anti-Malware Service for faculty, staff, and student laptops and desktops. 

For several years, University IT has provided the Sophos Anti-Virus tool to faculty, staff, and students at no charge. This summer, we began replacing Sophos with two tools from Microsoft. One of these tools, called System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP), provides signature-based anti-virus protection akin to Sophos and works with both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. SCEP not only consumes fewer computing resources than Sophos, but it is also more effective at recognizing malware. Additionally, for Windows machines, you can optionally pair SCEP with Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) for even greater protection. EMET protects commonly used software applications from malicious exploits and can prevent virus infections from occurring, even if the virus itself is too new for signature-based anti-virus software to detect. EMET can also be "personalized" by departments to meet local IT needs. 

Both SCEP and EMET are effective security tools that have minimal impact on your use of your computer, while providing you greater protection from malware. The Information Security Office encourages early adoption of these tools, and both are available today on the Essential Stanford Software site. If your computer is running Stanford's Computer Security, Patch, and Power Management service, known commonly as BigFix, University IT will work with your local IT department to take care of the migration.

Watch for further communications. If you would like more information about the new Stanford Anti-Malware service, please visit our service pages (Windows | Macintosh).