IT departments should check virus updates and software
patches before they take their Christmas break, after one of the
worst years for virus attacks yet.
The warning came from Mark Price, technical director of anti-virus
firm Panda Software. "There will be no change in the number of
viruses, but we will get seasonally related ones. There have been a
lot of virus variants and we expect to see new variants over
Christmas," he said.
"A lot of companies will be shutting down, but you still need to
make sure you have the latest updates. It is a good idea to set
your machines up for automatic updates over Christmas and load all
the latest patches."
Figures from IT security firm Message Labs have shown that in 2004
one e-mail in every 16 contained malicious code, compared to one in
33 in 2003. The most widespread outbreak of the year was
W32/MyDoom.A in January.
Sophos, using a different measure of activity, found the most
active virus to be Netsky-P, which accounted for almost a quarter
of all virus incidents reported.
The mass-mailing Netsky-P and Zafi-B worms have been battling it
out for the top spot for most of the second half of the year, and
internet worm Sasser disrupted thousands of businesses and home
users in May.