Remember to Protect Your Computer against Computer Viruses!

Remember to Protect Your Computer against Computer Viruses!

As we've tried to stress to everyone within the Rensselaer community, computer viruses continue to pose a constant threat to the security and safety of the data stored on their computers -- from laptops to PC desktops -- and so it's very important for all users to not only use anti-virus software, but to keep it up-to-date in order to provide the best possible protection for which it was designed.

Amazingly enough, as many as 1,200 new viruses have been known to emerge each month. As a result, it's becoming increasingly important for computer users to take advantage of updates from virus protection software vendors in order to detect or clean a virus.

Students who received laptops as freshmen in both 1999 and 2000 already have the Norton anti-virus software installed on their machines, and can easily perform periodic live software updates by doing the following:

  1. Connect to the network.
  2. Open the Start menu and select the Programs option. From the pop-up sub-menu that appears, position your cursor over the Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition option.
  3. From the next pop-up sub-menu, select the Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition option.
  4. In the window that appears, click the LiveUpdate... button.
  5. A Virus Protection Update window appears. Check the field labeled "How do you want to connect to a LiveUpdate server?" The current setting should be Internet. If it is not, left-click on the drop-down arrow beside the text box, and change it.
  6. Click the Next button to begin downloading the anti-virus software files. An In Progress window will appear and indicate the various stages of the update's progress. A Transfer Completed window will appear when the files have finished downloading.
  7. Click the Finish button to complete the update procedure.

    Remember, it is YOUR responsibility to keep your computer virus-free. We strongly recommend that you use some anti-virus software and keep it up-to-date for your own protection and peace of mind.

    You can find additional anti-virus information, as well as links to McAfee and Norton software upgrades, by clicking on the link under the Computing section of the main RPInfo homepage, and then clicking on the Virus Information link located at the top of the resulting CIS page. (Alternatively, you may enter the URL http://www.rpi.edu/cis/virus.html in the "Location" field at the top of your Web browser window.)

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