Australians warned over e-biz virus threat - News - Security

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Australians warned over e-biz virus threat

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
November 06, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Australians-warned-over-e-biz-virus-threat/0,130061744,120269688,00.htm

Companies and individuals worldwide face a significantly higher risk of computer virus infection from retail and leisure companies than other sectors, a new report has found.

The ratios of e-mails infected with viruses to other e-mails in the retail and leisure industries globally are more than one in 50, according to a report from managed e-mail security company MessageLabs. By contrast, accounting and legal companies have the lowest proportion, with less than one in 350 e-mails infected with viruses.

MessageLabs ascribes the high proportion of viruses in the retail and leisure industries to the fact those companies foster closer relationships with the home user market, which is notorious for its lack of security as a sector.

The report points out that the finance and banking sector, although promoting a similar relationship with its customers, has a lower proportion of infected e-mails to non-infected e-mails (one in 101) due to its rigorous focus on security.

The IT and Telecommunications sector has a virus to e-mail ration of one in 162. The report showed the most common virus was Bugbear (one in 324 e-mails), followed by Klez.H (one in 479 e-mails) and Yaha.E (one in 1069 e-mails).