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Faculty/Staff Home Use
Student Home Use

The Prairie View A&M University Information Technology (IT) Department in an effort to continually update and improve our services to meet the evolving needs of the University, would like to encourage all employees to deploy effective anti-virus measures on their own personal computer systems at home. This request comes as a result of the fact that many home users are extremely vulnerable to internet-borne virus attacks and can often be innocent carriers/transporters of virus infection into the University's data network via Internet mail, floppy disk or other means of data exchange between home and University systems. Therefore, to better combat this potential threat and assist in maintaining the integrity of our computer network, the IT Department has upgraded its Active Virus Defense licensing agreement with Mcafee, the worldwide leader in enterprise network virus defense. This new licensing has allowed IT to develop a Home Use Option Program as a new enhancement to the University's Virus Defense Solution. This program will extend our antivirus solutions to assist Faculty, Staff and Students in taking advantage of this necessary antivirus defense software by allowing them to install it on their personal computers at home. These enhancements reinforce the IT Department's commitment to continually improve our services and will greatly aid in keeping our computer network free of malicious viruses. The terms of this licensing agreement are listed below.

Faculty/Staff Home Use Option

This solution is based on the McAfee VirusScan Consumer Edition. The user will have on-demand and on-access scanning protection backed by 12 months of online DAT (virus definition) files and software engine updates. Access to online updates requires each home user to register via the online registration option. Once the home user has registered, you will be able to receive DAT and engine updates. This solution supports 32 bit Windows environments only, including Win95b/98, Millennium Edition and Windows 2000/XP. McAfee does not support installation on any unspecified operating systems and there is very limited support for older Windows 95b and Windows 98 systems.

IT defines Faculty/Staff Home Use as follows:

  Non-employment related use.

1. Installed on a computer system owned by the individual, not connected to the university network infrastructure.

Exclusions from Home use:

The following types of users are NOT classified as Home Users, and should instead be included in the appropriate corporate end user license agreement and support agreement:

1. Employees who are in reality Teleworkers, Home workers, Telecommuters or similar, even though they may be physically undertaking work for their employer from a home location.
2. Employees who perform work at home on any computer provided to them by the corporation for the purpose of work.
3. Customer wants PrimeSupport to support the end user
4. Application is to be managed by corporate IT resources
5. Application installed on a home user-owned system for the performance of employment-related activity.

Student Home Use Option

This solution is based on the VirusScan Corporate Edition, or Virex for Mac. The student user will have on-demand and on-access scanning protection backed by 12 months of online DAT (virus definition) files and engine updates. Access to online updates requires each student user to enter an appropriate Grant ID number. Other than online access to DAT files and version upgrades, Mcafee offers no support to the student user.

  IT defines Student Use as follows:

         1. Use by student not engaged in employment with the faculty.
         2. Installed on a computer system owned by the student.

Exclusions from Student Use:

         1. Workstations operated by employees of the institution.
         2. Workstations owned or operated by the institution that
              may be used by students from time to time.

Supported Minimum System Specifications

Pentium, Celeron or Athlon processor running a minimum of 166MHz, 64MB of RAM , Minimum 5MB of free hard disk space, Windows NT 4.0 SP6 or greater, Windows XP Home and Professional SP1, Windows 2000 Professional SP1 or greater, Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.0 or later (NOTE: VirusScan 4.5.1 has minimal support for Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME).

System Support Services

Helpdesk services in support of the antivirus software are available as follows:

Information Technology Helpdesk

Telephone: On-Campus Extension 2525 or Off-Campus (936) 857-2525

Hours of Operation: Monday through Friday 7:30am to 5:00pm

Installation and other support information available anytime at: http://www.pvamu.edu/itdept/