In an effort to help protect faculty, staff and students working from home, Duke has partnered with CrowdStrike to pilot Falcon Prevent for Home Use, a next-generation anti-virus solution designed to protect personal computers against malware, ransomware, and other cyber threats.
Duke is offering the CrowdStrike anti-virus software free for personal computers for a limited time and on a voluntary basis. This will allow faculty, staff and students to protect their home computers using the same technology currently in place for Duke-owned computers.
Falcon Prevent for Home Use is designed to work alongside existing anti-virus solutions (such as Windows Defender Antivirus) and can be installed on multiple machines in a household. The software runs silently with no user interface or icons. If a threat is encountered, it will display a brief notification message explaining actions taken (such as a block or quarantine of a malicious action or file). Information about the threat and the action taken are shared with CrowdStrike and is made available to Duke’s IT security offices for troubleshooting or questions. No other information about the user’s machine, activities or files is shared with CrowdStrike or Duke.
Faculty, staff and students can register for the software on the OIT Software website. Once registered, users are provided installation instructions. If you have issues with the installation process, or if the agent blocks something you believe is not malicious, please contact the OIT Service Desk.
