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 Around
half of UK businesses suffered from virus infection or denial of
services attacks during the last year, a survey shows. This has
risen from 41 percent in 2002 and just 16 percent in 2000. These
are among the findings from the 2004 Department of Trade and Industry's
biennial Information Security Breaches Survey, conducted by a consortium
led by PricewaterhouseCoopers. This is the second release of information
from the survey, full results of which will be published at InfoSecurity
Europe in London, April 27th-29th.
Earlier this year PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed
that the survey had found that backup facilities are letting UK
companies down. (See www.continuitycentral.com/news0956.htm
)
Key findings from the telephone survey
of some 1,000 companies include:
* Companies are increasingly vulnerable to attack with
89 percent of businesses (and virtually all large companies) sending
e-mail across the internet, compared with 77 percent in 2002;
* 72 percent of all companies surveyed had received infected emails
or files in the last year. For large companies this rises to 83
percent;
* Most companies have virus protection – 93 percent of those
surveyed, and 99 percent of large companies, have antivirus software
in place;
* Despite this, 50 percent of UK businesses (and 68 percent of large
companies) suffered from virus infection or denial of services attacks
during the last year;
* Blaster was by far the biggest culprit, causing a third of all
infections (and over half of those in large companies);
* Two-thirds of companies polled that had experienced any type of
security breach cited a virus infection as their worst of the year;
* Damage from virus incidents varied from less than a day's disruption
and no cost to major disruption to services for a month or more.
Chris Potter, the PricewaterhouseCoopers partner
leading the survey,
said: "Whilst almost every UK business has anti-virus software
in place, the incidence of attack is rising. With new viruses like
MyDoom and Netsky sweeping the world within hours of their release,
software is only as good as its last update and increasingly companies
have set their anti-virus software to automatically update itself
immediately a new release is available. However, anti-virus software
alone does not solve the problem - it's vital to install the latest
operating system security updates and patches as well. To check
this, companies need effective monitoring and audit processes."
The factsheet 'Viruses and malicious code'
can be downloaded from www.dti.gov.uk/industries/information_security
•Date:
3rd March 2004 •Region: UK •Type:
Article •Topic: ISM
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