THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE.
which is the world's third largest anti-virus software maker, it cost global businesses an estimated $55 billion in damages from computer virus attacks; an estimation that is expected to rise this year. Lionel Phang, Trend Micro's Managing Director said the economical and financial impact of virus attacks will continue to climb in 2004. With this information, companies are finally tuning into the damages of viruses and are scrambling daily for updated versions of anti-virus software in order to battle this giant.
Last year, there was almost one major virus attack every month, including the well known "Slammer Worm", which shutdown Internet service providers in Korea, disrupted plane schedules and knocked out automatic teller machines in January. There was the Lovegate Internet e-mail worm which surfaced in February, the Bugbear and SoBig viruses which spread via infected emails.
A new e-mail worm known as W32.Beagle and W32.Bagle is apparently spreading quickly, but assessments about its potential for harm varied according to a warning just issued by leading antivirus software companies. The new worm appeared last Sunday and spreads by harvesting e-mail addresses from computer hard drives, then mailing out copies of itself to those addresses, faking the "from" address on email messages it sends.
Also released is a new version of the Mimail e-mail last week. This virus targets customers of eBay Inc's PayPal online payment system. This virus arrives in e-mail boxes as a message purporting to come from the online payment PayPal. Once opened this virus collects customer's information such as name and credit card numbers. Virus attacks greatly drain company's precious resources and have a direct impact on productivity as well as profits.
Virus protection is a core business requirement due to the increasing frequency of rapidly spreading destructive viruses.
