Blaster tops the list as virus epidemic sweeps uk business, survey shows

Around half of UK businesses suffered from virus infection or denial of services attacks during the last year, a new survey shows. This has risen from 41% in 2002 and just 16% in 2000. These are among the initial findings from the 2004 Department of Trade and Industry’s biennial
Information Security Breaches Survey, conducted by a consortium led by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The full results of the Survey will be launched at InfoSecurity Europe in London, April 27-29.

Key findings from the telephone survey of some 1,000 companies include:

* Companies are increasingly vulnerable to attack with 89% of businesses (and virtually all large companies) sending email across the internet, compared with 77% in 2002;
* 72% of all companies surveyed had received infected emails or files in the last year. For large companies this rises to 83%;
* Most companies have virus protection - 93% of those surveyed, and 99% of large companies, have antivirus software in place;
* Despite this, 50% of UK businesses (and 68% 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.

These findings are published in a fact sheet - ’Viruses and malicious code’ - sponsored by security specialist Qualys.

Chris Potter, the PricewaterhouseCoopers partner leading the survey, said: