What it costs to be infected
"Many organisations don't even try to evaluate the cost of viruses to them - it is not an easy process."
- Frances Ludgate
Computer Associates
Viruses can cost a company tangibly much in terms of:
- Downtime caused by an outbreak
- Cost of purchase of a product/solution (maintenance, plus upfront cost)
- Cost to install/support the anti-virus solution
- Cost of re-entering lost data and restoring backups
"Many organisations don't even try to evaluate the cost of viruses to them - it is not an easy process," said Frances Ludgate, eTrust business manager of Computer Associates.
"However, if they are hit hard by an outbreak such as this, they are likely to have to analyze the cost for management accounting purposes," she added.
Down for the count, and out of the door
"Anything that causes downtime causes loss," said Ross Wilson, senior regional director, Symantec.
"In this case, there is the cost caused by lack of access to email due the the worm crashing mail servers, secondly there is the loss of data (the virus deletes files with certain extentions, like jpgs and mpegs)," he added.
Wilson also says that the original worm (there are multiple varients also circulating) carried a password-stealing Trojan, which made the loveletter virus at least five to six times worse than Melissa.
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