Software Downloads

Software Updates

There are two things to remember with regards to software updates. Do them always and often. There are two primary types of software updates for users to be concerned with. Anti-Virus and Security.

Anti-Virus Update

Purpose
The purposes of Anti-virus updates are to safe guard your machine against malicious computer viruses and other threats. The destruction caused by these threats and viruses can be at the least a nuisance. Viruses can compromise your privacy and destroy your system, making it absolutely unusable. This could require system restores and the loss of all data.

Faculty and Staff
For faculty and staff machines owned by the campus, the Information Technology department requires all such machines to have Symantec Anti-Virus installed and managed by the Anti-Virus Server. All virus updates on faculty and staff computers are handled automatically by our server pushing the most recent updates out as soon as they are available. When using a laptop not constantly connected to the Anti-Virus Server, regular Live Updates should be performed manually. If you have questions or concerns regarding this, please contact the helpdesk at helpdesk@muc.edu or on campus at ext. 4357.

Students
We require that students have an Antivirus product installed on personal machines. Students are allowed to use their own such as Norton, or McAfee as long as they are continuously updated. The College offers Symantec Anti-Virus program free to all students. To receive the software, please contact the IT Helpdesk.

Please Note: We do not recommend having more than one Anti-virus program installed at a time. Doing so may result in slowing your computer or causing things not to work.


Software Updates
When computer programs are written, there are often bugs in the software that can be exploited for malicious use or simply cause the program to break at the most inconvenient time. The operating system or program that runs every other program is no different.

This article applies primarily to Microsoft Windows Operating Systems. Approximately once a month Microsoft will release updates for their operating systems. They provide a website which you can access to automatically update you computer. This is available at http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com or clicking on the start menu and choosing Windows Update. If your computer does not have this, you can go to http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com. There is another option on newer machine where you can have it download and install the updates automatically. This can be accessed by going the control panel and configuring the option that says Automatic Updates.

Special Note: The IT department reserves the right to scan machines for patches and disallow access to campus network resources if security patches are not up to date.