On Your Workstation

When viruses or unwanted programs are detected on System office workstations (i.e. by visiting websites or downloading files to your local computer), a pop up window will warn you that your recent activity has caused the anti-virus software to trigger an alert.

What does it look like?

For workstations at the System Office, this is what the popup alert looks like:

(Click to enlarge)

It does not indicate your machine is being scanned by IT staff, it only indicates anti-virus identified a virus or multiple viruses on your machine.

What happens next?

Local IT staff also receive alerts when viruses or unwanted programs are triggered. If the threat is not benign or they need more info such as what you were doing at the time the virus occurred, they will contact you. They may need to run a full system scan to make sure the virus is completely removed from the system but they will let you know if this is necessary.

Do I have to do anything?

No action is needed on your part.

More than likely, the anti virus software will automatically clean or quarantine the infected file for you. You are only receiving these alerts so that you can correlate the actions you just performed (such as visiting a particular website or downloading a particular file) with the virus pop up. You should always exercise caution when visiting external websites or downloading files. The FAQ has a section on how to avoid getting computer viruses.

You may close the AV popup window by clicking the Close Window button on the lower right side of the window.

In Email

When people send email from the Internet, it comes through what is called an Internet Mail Gateway (IMG).  The IMG blocks viruses being sent to and from the Internet.  Internet mail would be considered anything that isn't sent from the Connecticut Community College Exchange mail system (i.e. local Internet Service Provider (ISP), Hotmail, Yahoo mail, etc.). 

• If a virus is detected in a message at the IMG and the message is cleanable, then the virus will be removed from the message and the rest of the message will be sent to you. You can identify these messages because the subject will have "[Virus Cleaned]" appended to it.

This type of "cleanable message" is not common these days since recent virus writers aren't infecting real mail with viruses, therefore we don't see these types of viruses that often.

• If a virus is detected in a message at the IMG and the message is uncleanable, then the entire message is discarded. This is the common virus today because virus writers are no longer "infecting" real mail with viruses - they are instead sending out viruses with made-up content that tries to get you to run the virus, therefore there is no "real" part of the message that needs to be cleaned of the virus.


• If a virus is detected in the message body of an E-mail, Outlook's E-mail virus scanner
will quarantine the message for you. You will receive the following email notifying you that the entire message was moved to the "quarantine" Outlook folder: