The University of Kansas maintains a site license contract for Sophos Antivirus products.

• Sophos Anti-virus products are licensed by KU Information Services for the exclusive use of University of Kansas students, staff, and faculty on their university-owned and personal computers.
• University-owned computers: Check with your network administrator prior to installing Sophos Anti-virus on a university-owned computer.
• New viruses and worms are created every day. We have configured KU's Sophos Anti-virus to check for updates every hour, automatically, providing you up-to-the-minute protection against new Internet beasts.

Sophos is available for download by KU Students, Staff, and Faculty here

New viruses and worms are created every day. Sophos (the company) issues updates frequently, small files that tell Sophos Anti-virus how to recognize and handle new viruses. Sophos AutoUpdate downloads these updates via the Internet from a server computer at the KU computer center. Usually, downloads are small, just one or a few files, and take a minute or less, even over a slow modem connection. At the end of each month Sophos issues a whole new version of Sophos Anti-virus. This is an upgrade. Sophos AutoUpdate downloads and installs this upgrade, which consists of replacement files for all or most of the Sophos Anti-virus program. This unique approach to software maintenance solves several problems that face software manufacturers. This is good. However, over a slow modem connection this download can take 45 minutes and will interfere with your other Internet activity. Over a cable or DSL connection though, even this big download only takes a minute or two.

Sophos is a package of three semi-independent modules: The Sophos Anti-Virus application, Sophos AutoUpdate and the Sophos Right-Click scanner.

• Sophos Anti-Virus is active whenever the computer is on. It's your guardian angel, constantly looking for viruses, watching over everything that comes into or goes out of your computer and everything that opens or starts. After the initial scan of your hard disk that it does after you first install Sophos, you won't notice Interchk's presence unless it finds something bad. It uses a very small amount of your computer's resources.
  
• Sophos AutoUpdate's only job is to download and install updates and upgrades. It also is always on. We have set it to check for updates 30 minutes. If you are not connected to the Internet it doesn't check. If you are connected, it checks, silently. You won't know it's been busy until it finds something new to download. When the download begins you will notice the shield icon in your tooldbar change color. You may Right-click on the shield icon and select "View updating status", change configuration settings (not recommended or available on all versions), and force a check for updates (Update Now). If you have a slow modem connection to the Internet, you may wish to force a check for updates at a time of your convenience rather than letting AutoUpdate choose its own time.
  
• The Sophos Right-Click Scannerallows users of the windows version to right-click on a file and select "Scan with Sophos Anti-Virus". This allows users to scan a suspicious file or drive easily. This also works from the My Computer screen which comes in handy if you would like to scan a floppy disk.