Anzac holiday quells Trend Micro gaffe

On Saturday, Trend Micro distributed a security update that caused IT workers around the world to spend the weekend fixing their systems. The Japan-based antivirus company said the update disabled computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Chris Poulos, managing director of Trend Micro Australia and New Zealand, said it was lucky the mistake happened over the long weekend and he was pleased with how quickly the problem was fixed.

"Yes we made a mistake. We are human and we do make them -- but we have recovered. Because it was Anzac day a lot of people had gone away. So it didn't really affect us [in Australia] at all. It pains me when we do something wrong but I have put my hands up," said Poulos.

Poulos suspects that the problem occurred because the patch wasn't properly tested, but he said the company is still investigating.

"Every antivirus company is under stress -- we have to continually keep putting the pattern files out. I would say one of the testing procedures wasn't done to its full extent. But it is still a mystery," said Poulos.

However, the problem could affect Trend Micro's reputation, according to James Turner, security analyst at Frost & Sullivan. Turner said even though the faulty update was released on a holiday weekend, it would still have caused problems.

"It is true that with the long weekend less people were probably accessing their machines. Most administrators are going to set their antivirus software to look for updates and the most important machine are more likely to be left on," said Turner.

Turner said that although the problem had been fixed quickly, Trend will have to work hard to build up the loss in trust.

"Antivirus vendors live and die by their reputation so when they send out and update that stops everything, it has got to directly impact their relationships," said Turner.