Sophos Intercept X Anti-Virus

Introduction

CSCS have used Sophos antivirus for many years.  Sophos has features such as ransomware protection.

About Sophos

On a Windows computer, you'll find Sophos in the system tray.

You can double click on the icon in the system tray to bring up the application. Here you can see the status of your computer or initiate a scan.

Virus definition updates

Sophos constantly issues updates to the anti virus software to recognise new viruses - many times a day in some instances.  As long as your computer is connected to the internet it will receive updated definitions.

Real-time scan

Real-time scans take place when you try to access a file, if the file is clean access is allowed.

Scheduled scan

The Scheduled scan is an automatic weekly scan that runs silently every Wednesday at 14:00 on your computer (e.g. if you're in France and your PC has set the time to be and hour ahead of the UK, the scan will run at 13:00 UK time).

The length of time the scan takes can vary as it is dependent on many factors, including hardware and volume of files. However scan on one of the new CSCS Micro-PCs may take around 20 minutes, however depending on hardware, amount of files the scan could take up to 2 hours.

You can continue to work while the scan runs, as with the previous scheduled scan it is silent and should not impact your work.

If you notice your machine become slow or the fan becoming louder during the scan, it may be worth closing some applications that you are not using currently. Web browsers such as Chrome are normally quite resource intensive, if you are noticing a large decrease in performance please contact the Service Desk so that we can investigate further.

Alerts

Sophos may show alerts in the area above the system tray. These may be advising you that something has been detected and locked.  If Sophos suspects that a file is malicious it will analyze and attempt to clean the file. A succession of pop-ups will appear as a file is detected then analyzed then cleaned.  You can see details for this process by opening the Sophos application and selecting "Events" from the top ribbon.

What to do if it detects something

Most pop ups from Sophos can safely be ignored as they are actively protecting and cleaning up threats on your system.

If Sophos detects an item and requires manual intervention to remove it, please contact the CSCS Service Desk at 01223 (3)36261 as soon as possible.

Sometimes Sophos will block an executable or file that is actually needed. If this should happen, please contact the CSCS Service Desk so that we can investigate.