Fred Editors Note: This is a great articled because computer viruses are a big threat to business large and small. This article provides current statistics of computer virus attacks. Anyone who spends a lot of time on the internet or with e-mail could benefit from this article.

ICSA Labs, an independent division of information security company Cybertrust, has been doing its Virus Prevalence Survey since 1996, and with each consecutive year, the frequency and cost of the attacks to medium and large-size organizations have increased.

In 2004, the number of virus encounters per 1,000 PCs per month worldwide increased almost 50% to 392. Just five years ago, in 2000, the figure stood at 91, and was only 10 in 1996. The number of actual infections rose as well, with the number of incidents where one virus managed to inflict significant damage to 25 or more PCs or servers at the same time increased by 12%.

The cost in hours and dollars of such attacks has also ramped up. Recovery time increased to seven days and costs averaged about $130,000, up 25% from 2003 levels.

A big part of the problem is that more and more e-mails are now virus-ridden, according to Messagelabs. Just 0.5% of e-mails received worldwide in 2002 contained viruses, but over 6% did in 2004. This means that there is a greater chance that a virus will enter a network through user error, especially since virus-laden e-mails are usually not as identifiable as spam to the average user.

While we may be making some progress in reducing the number of virus encounters that become virus infections, the sharp increase in the sheer number of attacks means that the effect on businesses continues to escalate.

Source: emarketer.com

 Information: Fred leads i Team. With a background in construction and agri-business laid Fred’s business foundation.