DOS, e-bugs, plague UK firms
p2pnet.net News:- About half of UK businesses suffered from virus infection or denial of services attacks in 2003, up from 41% in 2002 and just 16% in 2000.
The stats come in Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry’s biennial Information Security Breaches telephone survey, says a Security Park item here, going on that key findings from 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.
