College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences

MSU offers ESET Smart Security Premium Antivirus for personal use for Mac and Windows computers.   Each user that is actively employed as faculty or staff, can download and install the antivirus on their personal computer.    Unfortunately, retirees and alumni do not qualify and must obtain a personal ESET license through other means.   It is an unmanaged install of the software which means you control the settings.  

ESET antivirus has been a trusted antimalware software that has been in use at the university for a number of years.  Some of the great features of the software are:

Malware and Attack Detection

ESET monitors the applications and media typically used to transmit malware code which includes the web, email and  removable storage.   Eset can be set to prompt or automatically scan when removable media is inserted to scan removable media like USB drives and SD Cards to detect and stop malware before it becomes installed on your computer. 

Lastly,  ESET can detect common network attacks and block them.   It can tell you about such attacks when they are happening, so you can take action and even indicate if computers on your home, airport or coffee house wifi network are attacking or probing your computer.    

Vulnerability Detection

Similarly, even if the Windows or Mac Operating system doesn't inform you about vulnerabilities, ESET can detect if a users computer is vulnerable to attacks due to the lack of updates and inform the user, so the updates can be installed to rectify those vulnerabilities. 

For More Information

Information on ESET and the personal license for MSU staff and faculty can be found here: 

https://tdx.msu.edu/TDClient/32/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=883

Link above requires MSUnetid and password.