From: Phil deHaan (dehp@calvin.edu)
Date: Fri Aug 29 2003 - 11:25:14 EDT
August 29, 2003 == MEDIA ADVISORY
Students returning to the Calvin College residence halls next week Wednesday
will be greeted with a Lifesaver candy and a message urging them to "catch this
lifesaver."
The lifesaver in this case however is not the actual candy; rather it's a copy
of antivirus software that Calvin is providing free of charge to all returning
students.
The pitch is part of a push to prevent the recent spate of computer viruses
from infecting residence hall computers. When students return to campus next
week they'll be bringing hundreds of home computers with them - some of which
may already have the recent Sobig virus or Blaster worm.
Calvin hopes that a free copy of antivirus software will scrub all those
machines clean.
In fact, Calvin Information Technology personnel have been hearing horror
stories about computer viruses from colleagues at campuses across the country.
They note that on other college campuses 30-35% of all Windows machines coming
back from the summer were infected with the Sobig virus or the Blaster worm and
most of the others without up-to-date virus software became infected as soon as
they reached campus. The Sobig virus then began spewing out random e-mail
messages and slowing many networks to a crawl.
So this week Calvin Information Technology employees had a day-long meeting in
which they decided to get out in front of the situation and take a proactive
approach, including:
*buying antivirus software for every student with their own Windows personal
computer
*requiring the student to either supply their own up-to-date antivirus
software or install Calvin's before logging on to Calvin's ResNet network
*requiring every student to update Windows with all of the most recent service
packs before logging on to the ResNet network
Most years Calvin has jacks on and ready to go as students arrive in their
rooms. This year the college has been forced to turn them all off and wait for
each student to verify that they have an up-to-date antivirus package installed
and that their Windows has been updated with the most recent service packs.
NOTE: Calvin will be distributing the antivirus software and a packet of info
to all of the on-campus apartments today (Friday) from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. For
more info on that distribution contact Krista Spahr at 526-6819. For digital
pics of the distribution contact Spahr at 526-6819 or kls5@calvin.edu
-end-
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