West Virginia University has selected Sophos as its new anti-virus software provider and will begin transitioning some 17,000 computers starting this spring. The three-year contract was finalized Monday (April 2) for a total price of $515,033.
Sophos, which is used by other universities, scored the highest of any qualified vendor in a competitive and public request for proposal (RFP) process. Information Technology Services and a working group of IT directors from across the University tested the Sophos product for a month using various configurations, ensuring it would work in WVU’s diverse environments.
The deployment of Sophos will be done gradually and in close coordination with college and division IT directors. No individual user should remove their current anti-virus protection. WVU’s cyber-liability insurance coverage requires that anti-virus protection be provided across all University-owned machines, and ITS must be able to verify this protection. ITS and the IT working group will determine when each college or division will make this change.
Rolling this software out to 17,000 machines on all campuses and affiliated locations such as Extension offices will take time. ITS anticipates the conversion to Sophos will be complete by May 2019, well before the August 2019 expiration of the current contract with Kaspersky. In the meantime, ITS is confident in Kaspersky’s ability to provide quality anti-virus protection.
Under the new contract, WVU faculty, staff and students will have a free consumer version of the Sophos software for personally owned devices. ITS also will continue to provide downloads through freeav.wvu.edu, but the site will switch from Kaspersky to Sophos by June 1. ITS will provide more details on the consumer version of Sophos in the months ahead.
Please direct any questions to DefendYourData@mail.wvu.edu.