Viruses are a huge problem for businesses and individuals alike and can cause an enormous amount of lost working hours and system downtime, as well as resulting in the need for expensive system repairs or malware removals. They are responsible for a large proportion of all the identity theft that takes place around the world and can pose a serious threat to business margins if they are not properly protected against. This is particularly given the fact that the numbers of viruses are on the rise with new epidemics being discovered every day, infecting systems all across the globe in the blink of an eye.
In the context of this very serious threat to business, Google announced at the end of June that it is planning to publish internet security data on viruses and malware as a way of shining a spotlight on the reality of the challenges of internet security. The motivation for the regular weekly reports is to try and better inform those who use the internet, to highlight how many viruses there are out there and make sure that there is a public record of those websites that host viruses and malware in an effort to ensure that they are held accountable. Google’s search engine crawlers regularly scan the web and the company has said that the crawlers are turning up more than 10,000 virus and malware sites every day, which represents a phenomenal amount of attack that the average IT system has to protect itself against.
We all know the dangers of viruses and malware to our IT systems. As well as being key to identity theft, viruses and malware can retrieve sensitive, critical information that is often key to business function, competition and profits, significantly undermining the business that it has been stolen from. Now that so many companies are holding data on their customers, efforts to steal that data using viruses and malware also seem to be increasing exponentially, posing greater threats in the form of breach of data protection obligations and damaging data loss.
As well as keeping an eye on Google’s reports businesses can protect their IT systems with their own network security. ITC Security offers a selection of the latest solutions to network security, including email and web security and vulnerability management – see our website for more information.
