Subject:
If you own a computer at Colby you are required to do the
following...
...in order to avoid disaster:
1) Maintain fully operational anti-virus software.
2) Make backup copies of working documents.
We in ITS are encountering many students who are having problems
with computer virus infection and with lost or corrupted documents.
For us it is a large task to try to help but for you, when one
of these problems occurs, it can be devastating. If you own a
computer you must do the following:
1) License a good anti-virus software package and renew the subscription
to updates as needed. See http://www.colby.edu/info.tech/viruses/advice.html
for advice on what to purchase. Many student computers are being
infected because this essential protection is not in place. One
consequence of your computer being infected by a virus that is
aggressive in attempting to infect other computers is that we
in ITS, in order to protect other computer systems on campus and
throughout the Internet, will disable your Colby DCE account,
which will prohibit you from using email and will block access
to authenticated web resources, such as course selection pages.
Cleaning
a computer of a virus infection is a lengthy process and the virus
may cause the loss of some or all documents on your hard drive.
Student Computer Services
can help but you will definitely want to avoid infection in the
first place. If you do not have an up-to-date license and subscription
for anti-virus software, purchase it and install it immediately.
If you purchased the anti-virus software but its subscription
to updates has expired, renew it now.
2) Make backup copies of any document that is important to you.
When a student comes to the ITS support staff at SCS, devastated
that the paper on which he or she has been working for many hours
has become unreadable or deleted, we can try some recovery techniques
but often these fail. Usually the only effective recovery technique
is to copy from the backup (which you have made on a Zip disk,
floppy disk, or CD) and you can do this on your own in a matter
of seconds. If you do not have backup copies of your important
documents, make them right now and make additional backups as
you edit and enlarge your working document. This simple process
is absolutely essential. You have the resources to do it SO JUST
DO IT! Please don't make us have to see your agony when your document
is gone and it is due now.
Ray Phillips
Dir. of Information Technology Services
