YWAM Information Technology

Bill Hutchison wrote ...

It should no longer be considered an option to not have anti-virus software loaded onto any computers. There are a few good free anti-virus software packages available. Avast 4 Home is free for non-commercial purposes, which fits who we are as YWAM. They also provide free virus definition updates pretty much every day.

Here is a link to their web-site:
http://www.avast.com/

The software is free to use after you register it for free on their web-site.

We used to use program by Grisoft called AVG, but they have recently changed their conditions for free use to exclude any computer attached to a network, which means in many circumstances within YWAM we would not be allowed to use it for free.

For use on servers it is also strongly recommended to purchase a server grade anti-virus software package. At the moment I am not aware of free server grade anti-virus software.

Avast has updated their terms and conditions for Avast 4 Home and it works out that the program is no longer available for free to YWAM staff. It is available to students for free as long as it is their own computer and they are students, but it is not valid for any YWAM staff any more.

At Reef to Outback we are using eTrust AntiVirus on all of our servers and workstations. It has versions for Windows, Mac and Linux and has a central server that can monitor and administer all of the servers and workstations on the network, which should work our really well once I figure out how to load it onto the Macs so that they authenticate with the server...