University Software Standards

Effective from Oct 2019
Last Review: Sep 2019

Category	Recommended Software Standard	Acceptable Software	Software under consideration
1. Operating System	Windows 10 Enterprise Edition 64-bit (or 32-bit) Multilingual User Interface with Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese	Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition 32-bit (or 64-bit) Multilingual User Interface with Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese or Windows 7 Enterprise Edition 32-bit Service Pack 1 with Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese Multilingual User Interface*	—
2. Office Suite	Office 365 ProPlus	Office 2019 Professional Plus 64-bit (or 32 bit) Edition Multilingual User Interface with Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese Office 2016 Professional Plus 32-bit (or 64 bit) Edition Multilingual User Interface with Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese Office 2013 Professional Plus 32-bit Edition Server Pack 1 Multilingual User Interface with Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese	—
3. Document Exchange	Adobe Acrobat Reader DC	—	—
4. E-mail	Outlook of Office 365 ProPlus	Outlook 2019 Outlook 2016 Outlook 2013	—
5. Scheduling	Outlook of Office 365 ProPlus	Outlook 2019 Outlook 2016 Outlook 2013	—
6. Web Browser	Microsoft Edge	Chrome or Internet Explorer 11	—
7. Web Browser add-on	Windows Media Player 12, Adobe Flash Player 20, Shockwave Player 12, VLC media player 3.0.6	Adobe Flash Player latest version*	—
8. Anti-virus	Kaspersky Total Security for Business	—	—
9. File Compression	WinRAR latest version [NB: ZIP file format is still recommended]	—	—
10. Anti-spyware	Windows Defender (Pre-installed service with Windows 10)	Windows Defender (Pre-installed service with Windows 7 and 8.1)	—
11. Secured Shell	PuTTY , WinSCP latest version*	—	—
12. Protecting digital information, Data Encryption for USB removable storage devices; and full-disk encryption for laptops	Azure Information Protection (AIP)	Azure Information Protection (AIP) McAfee End Point Security Solution for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1	—

Remark: *

Microsoft will end the support for Windows 7 on 14 Jan 2020.
Adobe will end the support for Adobe Flash Player by the end of 2020.
Item 11 is required only for users who need to use the software.

Notes on the selection of University Software Standards:

For all software
- Both Chinese and English versions are recommended depending on the actual needs of the departments/units.
- Departments/Units are recommended to watch out for the securities patches/software updates provided by the vendors and install the critical patches when necessary. ITSC will also notify departmental LAN administrators about the critical updates of various software.
For Electronic Filing – To read PDF documents, departments/units are recommended to install the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader DC which can be downloaded from Adobe website. Users need to create PDF document could purchase Adobe Acrobat DC.
For Chinese Character Set – ITSC is implementing a Supplementary Chinese Character Set for the University so that our specially created Chinese characters would be displayed correctly.
For the software compatibility with the following campus wide applications, please refer to Tips and Getting Started guide at: