Antivirus Software for your Personal Devices (Sophos Home)
Sophos Home, is the University's supported antivirus product for Windows and Mac OS operating systems.
The software is site-licensed at Penn and available free of charge to members of the Penn community and can be installed on up to 10 devices.
Sophos Home offers a variety of protective services including:
- Real-time antivirus
- Advanced web protection
- AI threat detection
- Ransomware protection
- Banking protection
- Privacy + identity protection
- Malware scan and clean
- Remote management console
- Scheduled scans
- Automatic updates
- And allows you to protect up to 10 computers!
Download and setup instructions
Step 1 - Remove existing antivirus software
If you already have antivirus software installed on your computer, such as Symantec Endpoint Protection for Windows, you should remove it before installing Sophos Home.
Uninstall Existing Antivirus Software
If you already have antivirus software installed on your computer, such as McAfee VirusScan for Windows, you should remove it before installing Sophos Home antivirus products.
To remove existing antivirus software:
- Click the Start button, type "Uninstall" and select "Uninstall a program" from the list that appears
- From the list of programs, select your current antivirus program
- If one or all of the following messages display -- it may take 10 to 15 seconds for each message to appear -- respond as follows, otherwise, skip to step 4:
- If the Remove Shared File window displays and asks if you want to remove a shared file, click the No to All button, and then click No when the Remove Programs from your Computer window is displayed.
- If the Remove Program Directory window displays and identifies the remaining files in the antivirus software directory that you are removing and then asks if you would like to delete them, click the Yes button. For example, the path of the directory may look like the following: C:\Program Files\name of antivirus vendor\name of antivirus directory.
- If the following message displays, click the Yes button: "There are files in Quarantine. Would you like to permanently delete the quarantined files?"
- If the following message displays, click the Yes button: "A read-only file, C:\program files\name of antivirus vendor you are removing\name of antivirus directory you are removing\setup.exe, was found while attempting to copy files to the destination location. To overwrite this file, click the Yes button, otherwise click the No button."
- When prompted to restart your computer, click Yes.
- Close the Control Panel window, then close the Uninstall Program window or the Add or Remove Programs Properties window.
Step 2 - Download antivirus software
Sophos Home is available for download through the Penn Software Licensing Portal. Sophos Home
After you authenticate with your Penn email address, you will be sent an email from Sophos with instructions for download/installation. If you do not receive the message within 10 minutes, be sure to check your Junk folder to see if it's there.