Microsoft Defender Antivirus Software

Vendor: Microsoft

Supported Operating Systems:  Microsoft Windows and MacOS 10.14 and above

General Description: Antivirus software that automatically or manually scans for viruses, malicious, and/or threatening programs.

Licensing Mechanism:

  • Microsoft Defender is built-in to all versions of Microsoft since Windows 8.0. Personally owned Windows computers must have Defender enabled, unless another antivirus package is installed and active. 
  • Apple Mac users should download and install Defender manually on their computer.
  • Linux users should download the free ClamAV package from their distribution’s repository.

Method of Obtaining:

Mines support:  If you have trouble with virus infections, enabling or installing the software, please submit a request at the Mines Help Center.

A note for Linux users: Though they can (infrequently) be targeted by malware, ITS does not provide antivirus software for Linux computers. But antivirus programs are still recommended for those machines — if only to scan documents and USB drives coming from Windows computers. Here are some third-party recommendations for the best free and paid antivirus programs available for Linux.