ScanSafe released its latest Global Threat Report

ScanSafe, the global leader in managed Web security, today released its latest Global Threat Report on Web filtering, spyware and viruses. Among the reportís findings is data that reveals interesting differences in workplace Web use in the UK and US to search for a job, find a home and plan a wedding.

ScanSafe reported that in August, more than one in 50 Web pages requested by employees while at work were house hunting or job search web sites, representing a significant drain on productivity. In both the UK and the US, visits to house hunting related sites outnumbered visits to job search sites. However, beyond this similarity significant differences in Web usage emerged. Specifically, ScanSafe found that:

Workers in the UK are six times more likely to use the Web to visit estate agency sites to buy or rent a home than their US counterparts. In total, the company processed approximately 72 million Web requests for house hunting related sites in August.

US workers are six times more likely to use the Web to look for a new job than their counterparts in the UK. The company reported it processed approximately 3.5 million Web requests for job search sites in August.

UK workers are twice as likely to visit wedding-related sites during the work day as US workers.

ìGetting married, finding a job and looking for a home are three major life-changing events and itís interesting to see how these impact work habits between the two cultures,î said Eldar Tuvey, CEO and co-founder, ScanSafe. He added that the differences in Web usage to find a home, for example, may reflect the recent cooling-off of the US housing market.

ìThe bigger picture is that businesses need to develop an Internet acceptable use policy and have a Web security solution in place that can effectively enforce it. Uncontrolled, non-work related surfing at the office not only consumes bandwidth and lowers productivity, but exposes corporate networks to Web viruses, spyware and other malware that can compromise proprietary information,î Tuvey said.

Approximately 26 per cent of ScanSafeís corporate customer base blocks access to job sites while 20 per cent restricts access to property and house hunting sites.

Web viruses increase 23 per cent in August; Trojan-Clicker.HTML.Agent.a most widely blocked Web virus

ScanSafe also reported that Web viruses increased 23 per cent in August while spyware and adware decreased 12 per cent. The company blocked 238 unique viruses during the month, 34 per cent of which were new unique viruses ñ viruses blocked for the first time by ScanSafe. The Trojan-Clicker.HTML.Agent.a accounted for the largest single percentage of Web viruses blocked by ScanSafe (18 per cent). Zero-hour threats ó attacks that appear before an anti-virus signature is available ó accounted for 13 per cent of all Web-viruses blocked by ScanSafe in August.

Trojan-Clicker.HTML.Agent.a, first detected in February, redirects infected machines to specified advertisement web sites, resulting in unwanted pop-up advertisements and banners displayed on the infected machine and thereby generating high hit counts on those specified web sites as part of its advertising agenda. Upon execution, the Trojan displays a blank Web page to hide its actual content and attempts to bypass pop-up blocker applications, such as those from Norton Internet Security and Internet Explorer. It also adds the PayPopUpAds cookie so that it can track usersí browsing habits.

ìMany Web viruses linger for months and sometimes years, like a nagging cough,î Tuvey said. ìAs a result, businesses need to deploy multi-layered anti-virus protection that can block viruses, both old viruses and zero-hour threats, before they reach the corporate network.î

ScanSafe leverages industry-leading signature-based engines as well as Outbreak Intelligence ó ScanSafeís own proactive heuristics technology, to provide protection from inbound and outbound Web-based threats. Outbreak Intelligence leverages ScanSafeís position at the Internet-level to proactively identify threats, quickly develop heuristics, and test these against real data to ensure accuracy and effectiveness. ScanSafeís ability to analyse threats proactively ensures that Outbreak Intelligence heuristics are created and updated for immediate protection from both known and zero-hour threats.

The ScanSafe Global Threat Report is based on real-time analysis of more than five billion Web requests and more than 10 million Web threats processed by the company in August and represents the largest analysis of Web security threats based on real-world traffic.