EduSweep

I work as a system administrator in a secondary school so I’ve seen first hand the sort of unwanted files that can find their way onto a network. There might be gigabytes of MP3s and videos sitting in your student user areas along with all manner of scripts, viruses and exploits. You probably have software restrictions in place to prevent unauthorised exeutables running and an antivirus product to find the nastiest files but neither is designed to detect and remove unwanted content. Over time, these unwanted files will build up, eating up valuable storage space, slowing logons and posing a potential security risk. That’s where EduSweep comes in.

How it works

One way to remove unwanted files is to use the built-in Windows search with wildcards. For example, you could search for “*.bat” to find all batch files. Unfortunately, Windows search isn’t designed for cleaning up entire networks, and it shows - it’s only possible to search one target at a time, the search can be slow and there’s no way to analyse the results.

EduSweep Design

EduSweep’s approach is different. Its scan engine has been built from the ground up to search large networks with millions of files. Using its built-in definition lists, you can easily scan for scripts, executable files and media in a matter of minutes. It also supports keyword seaching, so files like “bob’s proxy list.txt” will be detected, even if their file extension isn’t dangerous.

EduSweep uses regular expressions to search for multiple filetypes at once and is capable of well over 2,500 files per second. And this is just the beginning; I’ve already discovered ways to futher improve the speed.

The built-in results viewer shows you detailed scan results, letting you take actions such as:

Deleting detected files or moving them to quarantine
Getting more information from sites such as FILExt and Google
Opening the containing folder to check for other suspicious files
Scanning the file for viruses using online services
Viewing the file contents safely

Also, a detailed HTML log is saved for each scan performed, which holds details about files detected, errors encountered, the time taken to scan, the user that requested the scan and more. You can print these logs to use as evidence if needed.

Donate

If you find EduSweep useful, please show your appreciation with a small donation. Your donation helps not only further development but also my university studies.

Donate £5 via PayPal | Donate £10 via PayPal | Donate £20 via PayPal