All,

<rant>
Forgive me for sounding off, but I am a little frustrated - this is not 
the first time there have been problems with AVG. . . and I feel that this 
needs to be said.

As everyone who participates in this list is aware, the reputation of 
initiatives in the ResNet problem space is very hard to maintain when 
things break all of a sudden like this.  Maintaining student 
belief/support in a system like CCA is an important aspect to the success 
of initiatives with students.  Students pay to use the network/their 
computer as part of their tuition - unlike in the business space where the 
ability to change requirements on your users can be a little easier to 
push through.

My staff and I spent over nine months testing every possible scenario that 
we could, producing tons of documentation and generally worrying about 
every detail.  We wrote up use cases and tested them.  We committed to the 
idea of having (and paying for) redundant systems and test environments so 
that we would NEVER deploy changes into production without rigorous 
testing.  We paid a LOT of money to have Cisco take care of a portion of 
the system and trusted that they would be just as dilligent in testing 
their changes.

I know that the problem of antivirus vendors and their changes is 
difficult, but that is why we have paid Cisco copious amounts.  Their 
documentation and sales literature does not say - "Antivirus checks will 
work some of the time, expect them to be problematic."  Cisco needs to 
invest more in testing their changes. 

It would seem to me that Cisco needs to also do at least the following:

IF support for all Antivirus vendors is untenable, reduce your list of 
supported antivirus vendors.  Apologize profusely to schools who now have 
to inform all the users of the unsupported Antivirus software.  In our 
market research before deployment, AU found that almost all of the vendors 
of computers used Antivirus products from one of 3 vendors.  We also 
determined that we HAVE to have at least one "free" antivirus option.

</rant>

Thanks for listening,

Eric Weakland, CISSP
Director, Network Security
Office of Information Technology 
American University
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202.885.2241