Tech Forum

pgm44 wrote:Hi, here in our ward we still use the 9.5 version. Even if I try to update I got the message update not necessary. I guess the newer version is for the US only.

Post #2 indicated that the upgrade was a mistake. None of our clerk machines have upgraded to 10. The FHC machines have all upgraded. But that just underscores that Clerk and FHC machines are under different management.

And all those people clicking "update" are only updating the virus signatures.

The FHC machines I mentioned were all updated to v10 automatically earlier in the Summer. However, in the last two weeks 2/3 of the 20 or so computers we have in the FHC reverted to an older version of Sophos, probably v9, not even 9.5.

What happened next was the auto-update on startup would fail, so I would have to go in and update each one again by forcing it. That worked. I viewed the second file grouping, and it included some other files not just the virus signatures. Once that update took, it has taken the updates normally now.

But still, if FHC computers are supposed to be on v10, why the reversion to a version posstily older than 9.5?

JamesAnderson wrote:But still, if FHC computers are supposed to be on v10, why the reversion to a version posstily older than 9.5?

Configuration error at CHQ. I was notified a day ago about a problem like that. The FHC machines should be finding their way back to 10.

I'm in that FHC now, the machine I'm on in fact re-updated to v10 while I was working on other things.

FYI, the Stake clerk disabled Sophos a while back on his Clerk PC and the machine has worked great ever since. He was getting a huge startup penalty and slowing everytime he started the PC (20 minutes or so). On a tech podcast about a week ago I heard them making fun of Sophos as their latest update had decided to classify all update programs as viruses including it's own. Hence, that's probably why his machine became totally unusuable as Sophos was declaring itself a virus and was stuck in a update loop. Piece of junk program if you ask me, don't know why we don't just use the free one from Microsoft.

In any case, even before this his PC was sluggish and disabling Sophos has made the PC very usuable again so even if Sophos clears their current update problem I probably won't be able to convince him to re-enable it.

ldsrussp wrote:don't know why we don't just use the free one from Microsoft.

Last time I looked, I don't think it was free for church use.

RussellHltn wrote:Last time I looked, I don't think it was free for church use.

Indeed, the Microsoft Security Essentials EULA says that only businesses (it makes no distinction between for-profit and non-profit organizations here) with up to 10 PCs can use it. And it has no enterprise deployment and management capabilities, which would be essential for any antivirus solution the Church might select.

Sophos is a real system resources hog. Since the machines in our stake are low on CPU speed and RAM, running Sophos really slows things down. In contrast, from my experience at home, Microsoft Security Essentials does not slow down your computer much. I don't know if it is as strong a barrier to infection as Sophos, though.

For the simple sorts of things that we do at church, our old machines are completely adequate. It would be a misuse of money sacrificed to the Lord to get us better machines. However, I do wish that the people who make purchasing decisions would consider how their software choices will run on the legacy equipment that most of us use. That said, assuming that we are going to stick with Sophos for the foreseeable future, it might be worthwhile to buy more RAM. That will probably speed things up a lot because Sophos ties up a lot of RAM.

Sophos has a huge user-base, double its nearest competitor in the enterprise web security space, and thus they find out about a lot more than say a startup that might have less of a resource-drain than they might have. However, that said, Sophos 10 is said to not be as much of a CPU hog than 9.5 even was.

They're always working on those things at major software providers, to ensure the best experience for all users.

Sophos has a great track record with antivirus solutions, and I understand that they do not publish reports about everything they find to VirusTotal but that doesn't mean they didn't trap the virus either. Found that out when I reported three new ones received in spam earlier this year.

They also have a great web content filtering solution I wish we were using, again the huge user base probably helps with that. Our current solution has a very small user base so they will probably be missing many bad sites, even with dynamic scanning of the content on the page, although something is better than nothing, I really wish we had the Sophos web filter too on top of anything else the Church uses to block all the garbage out there, including whatever the other filter will miss, it's that important from a security standpoint as well as any other reason one has to use a content filter in the enterprise.

Sorry but this last reply sounds too much like a shill for Sophos. If you are talking about their great track record of making machines unusable then I'm with you. If you are talking about their great track record of declaring their own update system a virus, then I'm with you. Otherwise, I pretty much am being forced to peer down my nose at Sophos.

Our Stake clerk basically gave the ultimatum of disable Sophos or get a new Stake Clerk. Cant' blame him as Sophos had destroyed the machine. He only has so much time in his life you know?