Antivirus+software

__**Presentation of the issue**__ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3536018.stm

A survey that was put together by an anti- virus company McAfee, said that 50% of senior managers, who manage small businesses, blame their staff for the damage done by viruses and other computer security problems. From the survey, information was presented that anti- virus software was vastly used on desktops machines 92%, servers 83%, network gateways 65%, and firewalls 85%. From this information, it can clearly be stated that some of the employees are using their work stations inappropriately. 66% of the respondents were sure that their employees went against the policy set by their company to install games, peer to peer trading software, video files and instant messaging systems

__**Background of the Issue**__

The enabling factors that have alowed this to come about would be the increasing number of computers not updating anti-virus software, so the existing software cannot tackle different viruses. The main concern in this article is viruses spreading onto computers in small businesses, which is of course not what each company wants. Probably the main cause of these viruses would come through e-mail the employee’s receive. One of the most affective forms of viruses that come from email is Trojan horse virus. This virus often carries damaging in a “plain wrapper”. Plain wrapper is normally an e-mail file attachment from someone you may or may not know. When you run the attachment, it can do all sorts of things you really don’t want it to do, like erase files to changing your desktop. Then it sends itself along to other people in your emailing address book so it can then propagate itself. There is of course software that counter against viruses, and they commonly known as antivirus software. Probably the most common antivirus software would be firewalls. Firewall is simply a program that filters information coming through the internet. The employees at the companies would have to regularly update their computers antivirus software due to viruses becoming increasingly more difficult to deal with, so better software is needed to tackle these viruses.

__**Impact of the issue**__

“The ICSA Labs survey of companies with more than 500 computers revealed that firms took an average of 23 person days to recover from each virus disaster(*) in 2002, compared with 20 person days in 2001. On the other hand, the average cost of recovery from each disaster increased from EUR65, 000 in 2001 to EUR75, 400 last year” (author unknown, April 3rd, 2003). This piece of evidence shows that companies have to play for their employee’s misuse of their computers. “The report also indicates that e-mails are still the principal source of infection. In fact, in the sample studied by ICSA Labs, 86 percent of infections originated from e-mails, while the rest stemmed from Internet downloads and web browsing” (author unknown, April 3rd, 2003). This piece of evidence supports what was writing in background of the issue, where it was saying that one of the main distributors of computer viruses is e- mails.

Business and Employment
 * __Area of Impact__**