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I got a new contract computer maintenance job at a private company with 127 computers. My job was to make sure that all the computers are working fine. First thing I looked for was of course an antivirus software. Every computer is equipped with a desktop version of Norton AntiVirus 2008 but not the corporate edition. This is a big mistake because the price of Norton AntiVirus 2008 for 127 license is nearly the same with Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition and the corporate edition can do much more than the desktop version.

The Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition provides advanced, enterprise-wide virus protection and monitoring from a single management console. Most importantly, the definition updates is much easier as all clients will grab the signature updates from the local server instead of all 127 computers wasting the Internet’s bandwidth to download the updates from Symantec’s server.

This could be one of the reason why they are experiencing really slow Internet connection at some time of the day. Fortunately most of the antivirus company provides an offline virus definition signatures for you to download and install on computers with limited or no internet connection at all.

This is what I did.
1. Turn off automatic Norton LiveUpdates on all 127 computers.
2. In local file server, schedule wget everyday at midnight to automatically download the latest virus definition and save it to a shared folder.
3. Make Windows XP (client) to automatically connect to the local file server and run the virus definition file when user is logged in.

wget is a very powerful software for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive command line tool, so it may easily be called from scripts and batch files. Manually installing the virus definition file is usually very easy. Simply run the downloaded executable signature file, it’ll detect the product version that is installed and will automatically extract the files to the correct location.

Since this article is about offline antivirus signature updates, I thought I should make a list on where to get other popular antivirus offline definition files for my future references and perhaps yours too. If I’ve missed any, please let me know.

avast! 4 Offline Virus Definition (VPS)	Download vpsupd.exe
AVG 7.5 Updates (AVI)	Download
AVG 8.0 Updates (AVI)	Download
Avira Offline Virus Definition File (VDF)	Download ivdf_fusebundle_nt_en.zip
BitDefender Product Updates	Download
Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) Virus Database	Download main.cvd and daily.cvd
F-Secure Virus Definition Databases	Download latest.zip
Kaspersky Antivirus Database Updates	Download
McAfee Virus Definition Updates (DATs)	Download
Norton / Symantec Virus Definition File (VDF)	Download
Panda Virus Signature File	Download
Sophos Virus Identify Files (IDE)	Download
Trend Micro Offline Pattern Files	Download

Both ESET NOD32 and Norman products doesn’t offer offline virus definition signature updates. So if you’re going to install an antivirus on a computer that has limited Internet connection, do not go for NOD32 and Norman. Usually installing the offline pattern files is very simple. Just run the downloaded signature file and it should automatically detect the installed product and extract to the appropriate location.

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