The University will soon be switching antivirus software in an effort to save about $45,000 a year.
To comply with the change, students and faculty must remove the current product from their laptops before August 1.
Stan Waddell, executive director and information security officer for Information Technology Services, said UNC pays licensing fees to Symantec, the current antivirus software provider, and is making a change to Microsoft.
He said UNC will save money by making this change because licensing for the new product is already covered by the campus agreement with Microsoft.
Although all University computers will be switched to the Microsoft antivirus, according to the ITS email sent to the community March 18 on how to comply, students and faculty can choose to use whichever antivirus product they want for their personal computers.
Ramon Padilla, associate vice chancellor and deputy chief information officer for ITS, said the University is changing antivirus vendors because administrators were unhappy with some of the functions of the software.
“Much of the feedback that we have received has been from the departmental administrators that have to administer the software from their departments, and Symantec is not always the easiest product to use,” he said.
“All products have issues, but it had some issues that were problematic for some people.”
Tim McGuire, director of campus infrastructure services, said that because the University will no longer be paying the licensing fee, students and faculty will be responsible for paying that fee if Symantec becomes aware that they are still using the product after August 1.
