CU Boulder’s temporary license for ESET Endpoint Antivirus is ending and we will now be transitioning all university-owned Mac systems to Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac by December 5, 2019. This does not apply to personally-owned machines. (There is more information about why this antivirus change had to be made near the end of this article.)
Dedicated Desktop Support (DDS) customers will automatically have ESET Endpoint Antivirus removed and Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac installed on DDS-managed systems on December 3, 2019.
Non-DDS Customers
If ESET Endpoint Antivirus or another existing antivirus software is installed on university-owned Macs, it should be uninstalled and Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac should be installed. Please note that Microsoft Defender ATP is only supported on the three most recent major releases of macOS. And since macOS 10.14 Mojave is our currently recommended macOS, we recommend that Mojave is installed before installing Defender ATP. For help finding software upgrades for your mac, please visit the Apple Software page.
If you are unsure if a machine has antivirus protection, check the icons on the right side of the menu bar. ESET appears as this blue icon in the menu bar:
After December 5, university-owned Macs will stop receiving updates from ESET and will no longer be protected from malware if ESET Endpoint Antivirus is installed.
How did we get here?
Near the end of 2018, Microsoft abruptly ended support for System Center Endpoint Protection, but didn’t offer its own replacement at that time. However they did offer our campus a temporary license for ESET Endpoint Antivirus until a new in-house solution was available. Now that Microsoft has rolled out Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac, our temporary license is set to expire. OIT has tested Microsoft Defender ATP and we now recommend it as a long-term antivirus solution for all university-owned Macs.
Please contact the IT Service Center at help@colorado.edu or call 303-735-4357 (5-HELP from a campus phone) if you have any questions related to this change or need help with installation.
