F-Secure Anti-Virus version 5.40
A new release (5.40) of the F-Secure Anti-Virus (FSAV) software has arrived. F-Secure are advising all their customers to upgrade to version 5.40, including those who have hitherto remained with version 4 because their PCs are not powerful enough to handle the earlier releases of version 5.
As with all new releases of software, we take a cautious approach to this development. We have tried version 5.40 on a range of PCs without encountering problems. As a result, our advice on upgrading is as follows:
- If you are running v5.30 successfully you do not need to upgrade immediately
- If you are running version 4 you will have to upgrade to v5.40 before long, because the signature string updates for v4 will not be available indefinitely
- Version 5.40 is claimed to perform effectively on machines with as little as 32 Megabytes of RAM, without slowing down the normal working of the system to the extent that earlier versions did: our initial experiments tend to confirm this claim
- There appear to be improvements both in performance and ease of use over versions 5.21 and 5.30, and considerable improvements compared with version 4
The chief advantage of version 5 generally over version 4 has been the ease with which the signature strings can be updated. Signature strings are the tell-tale signs of a virus which are used by the anti-virus software to detect and identify infections. To operate effectively the anti-virus software needs an up-to-date database of signature strings. With version 4 you have to download the entire signature string database each time you update (which should now be every day or so). Since the first release of version 5 there has been an "Update Now" button which enables you to update the database incrementally, so you only need to download the new strings. This is an obvious advantage particularly for those using a dial-in line.
FSAV v5.40 integrates support for Windows XP and is therefore the first release which is recommended for all Windows users (unless you are running on less than 32MB of RAM). Experience has taught us that the recommendations of software suppliers need to be tested over time and on a wide range of computers, but so far the signs are promising. FSAV v5.40 is available for downloading from the IT Services web site. If you encounter problems with it, please contact the Helpdesk (ext 3333 or e-mail helpdesk).
We continue to have some reservations about the BackWeb feature of FSAV. BackWeb is alerted almost as soon as any new strings are added to the database, and downloads them to your PC for you. This is fine, so long as it works, and several users have reported themselves completely satisfied with it, but we have had too many reports of it not working for us to feel entirely confident.
Finally, looking to the future, there are two developments which will eventually reduce the virus burden. First we expect to introduce virus checking of e-mail traffic passing through our mail servers; this should keep some of the incoming viruses at bay. It will not relieve individual users of the need for vigilance on their own machines, however, and you will still need to keep your anti-virus software up-to-date. A second proposed development, a little further down the line, is therefore to be welcomed. The work which the systems group have been doing on managing the PC classrooms has involved central administration of anti-virus software, and in time it is hoped to extend this facility to PCs in staff offices.
Important note about F-Secure: The default scanning option is to "scan with extensions". This means that the software only looks at files with certain "extensions", such as Word documents, which have the extension .doc, or executable programs with extensions such as .exe or .com. Although the list of extensions scanned is now very long, there is still the chance that infected files will be missed, and we strongly recommend that you change the option to "Scan all files" for both real-time scanning and manual scanning.
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