Thursday, February 12, 2015

UGA students, faculty and staff are invited to bring their personal laptops for free security checks at Enterprise Information Technology Services’ Spring Computer Health and Security Fair.

The fair will be held Tuesday, April 7 and Wednesday April 8, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the second floor rotunda of the Zell B. Miller Student Learning Center (MLC).

During the event, technical volunteers will provide security checks and free virus and malware removal for personal PC and Mac laptops. They will also install the latest software and security updates, ensure that firewalls are enabled and update antivirus and operating systems. Volunteers will also examine other software problems, such as slow performance and unknown error messages.

The fair is also an excellent opportunity for participants to learn the best ways to protect their personal computers against viruses and other security threats, said Brian Rivers, associate chief information officer for university information security.

“The Computer Health and Security Fair is a great way for us to help the students,” Rivers said. “It raises information security awareness while helping remove malicious software and helping to protect personal data.”

Technical volunteers will handle requests on a first-come, first-serve basis. Comprehensive health and security check-ups can take between 30-60 minutes, and at times, there may be a short wait prior to visiting with a technician. For issues that will take more than an hour to resolve, technical volunteers will give guests instructions for how to fix those issues.

University-issued computers will not be checked at the fair.