Below you can find a brief summary of the information we currently have available about the ZotDefend program.

Send us an email (sscs@uci.edu) to make an appointment to set up the ZotDefend requirements on your computer. This is only required on university-owned computers, not on tablets, phones, or personal devices. Please provide your computer's property tag, which is on a barcode sticker on your computer and looks like this:

The appointment should take 15-30 minutes, during which we will install an application called BigFix. This will add the computer to our inventory and we can use that to install the other remaining required applications in the background while you can continue using the computer normally.

Only stage 1 is being implemented right now:

The UCOP Cybersecurity Mandate requires compliance by May 2025. This will be our primary area of focus.

We will use an application called BigFix to install the following packages:

• Trellix HX
  • this is the EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) component of the Cybersecurity Mandate
  • https://www.oit.uci.edu/services/security/edr/
• Tenable Nessus
  • this is the vulnerability management component of the Cybersecurity Mandate
  • https://www.security.uci.edu/services/vmp/

You can download the installer for BigFix for your computer on your own, or we can help you with this during our appointment.

• For Mac: BigFix-SocSci-Mac.zip
• For Windows: BigFix-SocSci-Win.zip

The BigFix installer is password protected. We will provide the password to open the .zip archives during our appointment with you.

If you are installing this on your own, please email us (sscs@uci.edu) with the computer's property tag number, and we can send you the password. The property tag looks like this barcode sticker:

This will not be implemented right away, but in the future OIT is discussing requiring the following additional security policies:

• the above minimum packages, plus
• Duo Desktop
• Full Disk Encryption
• MS Defender
• Jamf/Intune device management enrollment

They would enforce this by blocking access to certain UCI websites if you do not meet these security requirements.

Here are the OIT published pages about the ZotDefend project:

• https://www.oit.uci.edu/2025/03/26/secure-your-devices-with-new-zotdefend-security-package/
• https://www.oit.uci.edu/org/projects/zotdefend/
• https://uci.service-now.com/sp?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0013374