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The university’s Information Technology Services department recently experienced an up-
tick in computer viruses, which started in October, said an Information Technology Services spokeswoman.

There were 1,478 incidents of virus detection on 30 managed computers – staff and lab machines – which is considerably higher than the last several months, said Alison Cruess, ITS communications coordinator.

The virus triggered the university’s virus protection – Symantec’s new Bloodhound software that tracks down heuristic viruses.

These viruses exploit vulnerabilities in software and allow third-party machines the ability to take control or use the computer in a malicious way, according to Symantec’s White Paper Series on Bloodhound and
heuristic viruses.

“We re-imaged the infected machines and got it back to a known good condition,” Cruess said. “If teachers could not be down – due to usage during the semester – we would scan and monitor the computer’s alerts issued from the virus software.”

UNF has a contract with Symantec to provide anti-virus software to all current students.

The software can be found under MyWings’ Student tab in technical resources.

Students living in the dorms receive additional software – Spysweeper – which will help reduce the possibility of a viral outbreak.

Studen’s are also urged by ITS to turn on the operating system’s automatic updates and their default firewall software.

E-mail James Cannon II at asst.news@unfspinnaker.com.