Unsafe computing in abundance

Reports and statistics on unsafe computing practices.

Last month saw a flurry of reports and statistics on unsafe computing practices. To kick off, almost a quarter of Internet-connected users in the UK believe they have suffered from a virus attack in the past year, according to figures released by the Office of National Statistics. In a survey, 23% of respondents claimed that their computer had been affected by a virus in the past 12 months, and just under half of the respondents admitted to rarely or never backing up the data on their PCs.

Moving on to corporate security, Panda Security has revealed that 59% of companies that scanned between 20 and 30,000 PCs using its online malware audit service Malware Radar were harbouring active malware on their systems. For companies with smaller networks (10 to 19 machines) the figures were barely any better, with active malware being found in 47% of the companies using the audit service. The number of infected companies with fewer than 10 machines fell to 37% for those with between five and nine machines, and 35% for those with fewer than four.

Staying with corporate security, a study by Cisco and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) has found that mobile workers are not being diligent about security. The study examined the behaviour of workers using smartphones, PDAs, laptops and other mobile devices in the US, UK, Germany, China, India, South Korea and Singapore. Of those surveyed, 73% confessed that they were not always aware of the security risks involved in mobile working or of the best practices for secure mobile working. Reasons given for the failure to comply with security best practices (when aware of them) included being too busy, not considering it a priority, and considering security to be the responsibility of the IT department.

The survey also showed that many mobile workers hook up to unauthorized wireless connections - hopping onto unsecured wireless networks in their neighbourhood or in public areas. Reasons given by some of the 54% of Chinese mobile workers and 20% of their US counterparts who admitted to using unauthorized connections included their own connections not working or simply not wanting to pay for their own connections. An alarming number of the mobile workers surveyed (44%) said they regularly open emails and attachments from unknown sources, with many saying that the small screen size of PDAs and smartphones makes it difficult to identify suspicious emails.

Of the US respondents a disappointing 39% claimed never to have received any security training, while 14% couldn't recall whether they had received training or not. Following the study NCSA executive director Ron Teixeira has called for mobile security awareness to be made a top priority in businesses worldwide.

01 September 2007

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