AntiVirus Software – Worth the Buck?

A computer virus which shut down Ealing Council's services is estimated to have cost the authority more than 500,000. The virus which hit the council's server on May 14 and threatened computers on and off for 12 days, came from a USB memory stick used in the Ruislip Road office. Immediate recovery costs totaled 202,000, for staff overtime, catering, travel, eliminating the virus and rebuilding computer systems. For some companies it may have been worth a few extra dollars for decent antivirus software. In this day and age it’s crucial to have spyware removal and antivirus software.

E-mail spam and so-called phishing attacks are on the rise and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have come under attack. The threat to personal information is frightening. A computer virus, or malware, is not unlike a germ or virus that makes you sick. Computer viruses spread and mutate from one computer to another, infecting entire networks. But like physical ailments, cyber security experts say there are steps we can take to protect ourselves. Some hackers have been known to accumulate funds in the million dollars like the most recent Gonzalez. In the new case, the hackers used software known as malware and so-called injection strings to attack the computers and steal data, prosecutors said. They installed “sniffer” programs to capture data “on a real-time basis” as it moved through the computer networks and used instant messaging services to advise each other on how to navigate the systems, according to the indictment. They also programmed malware to evade detection by anti-virus software and erase files that might detect its presence, prosecutors said.

Why take such extreme precautions? The alert indicates that the sophistication, stealth, and sheer volume of malicious software being distributed these days is testing the limits of traditional anti-malware protections, such as antivirus software. According to the latest estimates by anti-virus maker Trend Micro, at least 253 million systems were infected with malware last year, the majority of which were the result of software lying in wait on hacked or malicious Web sites. At the rate that new malware specimens are being created - more than a million per month - Trend estimates that the comparable number PCs that will be infected with malware in 2009 will nearly double, to 491 million.

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