Free program to update virus definitions (IDE files) for Sophos for Windows

[Andrew McLean]

Sophos Anti-virus (SAV) is a proprietary anti-virus program, which is
mainly marketed to large organisations. The license purchased by my
employer allows the use of the software by employees on their personal
computers at home. I believe these terms are typical. Unfortunately,
although it is in many respects a very nice program, the basic version
of SAV does not provide for automated updating over the Internet,
instead a tedious manual process is required.

To fill this gap, I have written a program, for the Windows
implementation of the Sophos Anti-Virus, that automates this manual
process.

This program determines the installed version of SAV, checks whether
there are new virus definitions (IDE files) available on the Sophos web
site, downloads and installs them if appropriate. Note, although the
program does download and install new IDE files, it is still necessary
to manually install new versions of the program at least every 3 months.

http://updatesophos.sourceforge.net/

The program is licensed under the GPL.

 

[Bill]

. I believe these terms are typical. Unfortunately,
although it is in many respects a very nice program, the basic version
of SAV does not provide for automated updating over the Internet,
instead a tedious manual process is required.

Tedious? It required a mouse click.

<shakes head>

 

[Andrew McLean]

Tedious? It required a mouse click.

It's only that simple if you license the Enterprise Manager component of
Sophos. My employer didn't, so I wrote the program.