The AVAST Free for Education team spent a week in Orlando, Florida at one of the country’s premier educational technology conferences, FETC. School administrators, IT professionals, media specialists, and educators visited our comfy booth, all curious about what the world’s most trusted antivirus software company was doing there.
Here’s a run-down of the Top 10 questions about AVAST Free for Education:
- 1. What is the Free for Education program?
AVAST supports education in the USA by making our business-grade security product, which has the same features and performance as paid ones, available for FREE! - 2. Why are you doing this?
Everyone wants an avast! Teddy bear
There are two good reasons: The first one is technical – we collect threat data from our community of 200 million active users which the Virus Lab uses as a “sensor net” to automate virus research. So whenever we see something suspicious, it automatically gets transmitted to the cloud, and based on the threat data, we create new definitions and stream them back to the whole user base. It’s really quite unique and helps us to leverage the size of our user base, because no other antivirus company has as many users as we do.
The second reason is Free for Education is part of our expansion plan, to simply make US users more aware of avast! Antivirus. We have about 14 million avast! Free Antivirus users in the USA now, but we want that number to increase. Giving our business-grade security product to schools for free will also help us spread the word about our products for home-use and mobile.
- 3. How do you make money?
This program is not about making money, but improving our detection rate and increasing awareness. That being said, Free for Education participants can add our premium technical support at a special annual rate of only $1 per license. We heard from visitors to our booth, that they would still save money because they were paying about $4 per license with other programs. - 4. Is my school eligible?
If you are a school district, public school, private school, university, library or any educational provider and have between 5 and 30,000 endpoint devices (laptops and desktops) with Microsoft Windows OS, then you are eligible for avast! Free for Education. - 5. We have a mix of different computers on our network. Will it work in my school?
avast! Endpoint Protection Suite compatibility includes full support for all Microsoft Windows versions from Windows XP through Windows 8.1. This means that your school can use a mix of older PCs with the latest Windows tablets, touchscreens and convertible Windows 8.1 devices. - 6. What does the software include?
- Certified antivirus trusted on more than 200 million PCs, Macs, and Androids
- Protection for endpoint devices and supporting servers
- Endpoint protection for up to 30,000 Windows devices
- Two central management and deployment options
- 7. How do I register for the free education licenses?
You can get business-grade licenses for your educational institution by registering here: http://www.avast.com/en-us/education
Not only were visitors interested in our Free for Education program, but many stopped by to admire our booth and rest their tired feet.
- 8. Where did you get these great chairs?
- From our friendly, neighborhood Ikea. We put them together too!
- 9. I hear different accents. Where are you all from?
Our team is international: Stephanie is from the UK, Pavla is from Czech Republic, Deborah and Chris are from the USA, and Max is from Canada.
- 10. Where did you get those amazing orange pants?
That is a fashion secret! 
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