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Report: AV users still get infected with malware

One-third of internet users in the EU caught a computer virus, despite the fact that 84% of internet users used IT security software (anti-virus, anti-spam, firewall, etc) for protection.
Written by Dancho Danchev, Contributor

According to data released by EUROSTAT, the European Union's statistics agency, one third of internet users in the EU caught a computer virus, despite the fact that 84% of internet users used IT security software (anti-virus, anti-spam or firewall) for protection.

In 2010 in the EU27, a large majority of individuals (84%) who used the internet in the last 12 months stated that they used an IT security software or tool to protect their private computer and data. Among the Member States, more than 90% of internet users in the Netherlands (96%), Luxembourg, Malta and Finland (all 91%) used IT security software, while it was less than two-thirds in Latvia (62%), Romania (64%) and Estonia (65%).

Countries with the most infected users:

  • Bulgaria (58%)
  • Malta (50%)
  • Slovakia (47%)
  • Hungary (46%)
  • Italy (45%)
  • Germany (22%)
  • Finland (20%)
  • Ireland (15%)
  • Austria (14%)

In similar findings accompanying EUROSTAT's data, PandaLabs recently released data indicates that in January, 50 percent of computers worldwide were infected with some type of computer threat, in this case, trojan horse, allowing malicious attackers access to a victim's host as well as to financial data.

50 percent of all computers scanned around the globe in January were infected with some kind of malware. As for the most damaging malware threat, Trojans caused the most incidents (59 percent of all cases), followed by traditional viruses (12 percent) and worms (9 percent). The list of most prevalent malware threats is topped by generic Trojans, followed by downloaders, exploits and adware. It is worth mentioning the presence of Lineage, an old Trojan that continues to spread and infect systems.

Does this mean that security software is ineffective at all? Not necessarily, as it has to do with successful social engineering attacks, even expanding window of opportunity for malicious attackers to take advantage of, by the time their latest "release" gets the (automatic) attention of an antivirus company.

The bottom line? Prevention is always better than the cure.

Correction: The original headline "Report: 87% of AV users still got infected with malware" to this post was incorrect and has been changed.

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