Norton AntiVirus Software Is Now Standard for Use on Lab Macs, PCs

The Laboratory has adopted Norton AntiVirus software as the standard for detecting and eliminating computer viruses. The Norton application replaces F-Prot for PCs and SAM (or Symantec) for Macintoshes. The Norton software is easier to use and is automatically updated to include the latest virus "signatures," the telltale coding identifying a file as a virus. With other applications, such signatures had to be updated manually, and relied on the end users to do the updating. To download the appropriate version of Norton AntiVirus, click here.

The software is available at no charge to Lab employees through a site-wide license. If you need help installing the software, or have questions about Norton AntiVirus, contact the Computer Support Help Desk at X4357.

Virus infections represent the vast majority of computer security incidents at the Lab and a significant number of PCs and Macs at the Lab are infected with some sort of computer virus. Many of these infections go unnoticed but will eventually cause problems ranging from minor annoyances to major data loss.

Perhaps the most common method by which viruses are spread among Berkeley Lab computers is email. There are now hundreds of viruses that infect Microsoft Word documents. When these documents are exchanged via e-mail (or any other means), the virus spreads. The Lab automatically scans all e-mail enclosures as they pass through the Lab's main email gateway (lbl.gov) for viruses. Whenever a virus is found, the file is cleaned and a message is sent back to the person who sent the message.

However, only e-mail that goes through the lbl.gov gateway is checked. Therefore, employees should encourage anyone who sends them email enclosures to use their "@lbl.gov" address. And of course, you should try to use "@lbl.gov" addresses whenever you send e-mail enclosures to your colleagues at the Lab.