In the ongoing fight against "malware," any form of malicious software, ETS is exploring several types of anti-virus and spyware-removal and prevention software.

While most people are familiar with how viruses work, many are less familiar with spyware -- software that is secretly installed on a computer to monitor what a user does on the web, find personal information and send it to an unauthorized party.

"We are currently using Norton Anti-Virus Corporate Edition to prevent viruses, but there are some concerns that the automatic-update virus definitions are only performed once or twice a week," says Stan Judkins, a senior workstation support technician in the De Anza Technical Services Department.

According to industry experts, Symantec (publisher of Norton Anti-Virus) and McAfee (another leading anti-virus company) are making conscious decisions not to market a product to prevent or remove spyware because they currently can't come up with a successful prevention and removal tool. This demonstrates how difficult it is to create a single, reliable tool.

For these reasons, ETS is currently testing a variety of spyware-removal and prevention software. One that looks good is Panda Anti-Virus software. The benefits include daily updates to virus definitions and some spyware-detection capability.

Unfortunately, there is no single application currently available that will catch all of the spyware on a system. Often, when ETS staff members scan computers for spyware, as many as 50 to 60 different infections are found on any one machine. ETS techs have reported that it can take up to five hours to scan and remove all spyware applications only to find that the computers get infected again shortly after they have completed the removal process.

Spyware currently only attacks Windows-based computers. To date, Macintosh computers have not experienced this problem.