Centralized Virus Protection at Wesleyan

Our virus protection strategy at Wesleyan is to try to protect ourselves from all possible sources of infection. In addition to having up-to-date virus protection software on all desktop computers, there are some centralized safeguards in place to protect the campus.

E-mail Virus Scanning

A virus protection program called Sophos runs on our email servers and scans all email for viruses before it is delivered to your computer.

When a virus is discovered, the program will remove it if possible or delete the attachment if it is not. You will receive the disinfected email along with a message explaining the action that was taken and requesting that you notify the sender that a virus was received along with their email. If you send an email that has an infected file attached to it, you will also receive notice that this has happened.

This is a totally automated process and does not impact the security or confidentiality of your email communications.

There is the possibility that mail delivery may be slightly delayed during peak periods as a result of this process. The delays should be brief and we feel this is a worthwhile trade-off for the protection it will give us.

File Server Scanning

Files stored on Dragon, the campus file server (a Network Attached Storage device which is part of the Wesleyan Domain), are scanned daily for viruses.

This does not eliminate the need for virus protection on the desktop!

New unidentified viruses can slip through and there are other possible sources of infection beside email, such as floppy disks, zip drives, or network file sharing. Some of the recent worms can even slip right into your computer through shared folders or certain programs that communicate over the Internet.  It will still be critical to keep all desktop virus protection software up-to-date and to be cautious of activities that could result in infection. If you need help updating your virus protection program see the links below or call the Help Desk at x4000 or contact your Desktop Support Specialist.

For Desktop Virus Protection information, please click here.