Home Workers Likely to Enhance Threat of Malware Infections

California-based online security provider ScanSafe has noted that with the increasing tendency of employees to work from home in wake of the rising threat of swine flu is leading to an increase in the rate of malware infections.

ScanSafe has observed that the number of wandering and home workers has increased 200% during May-June 2009 and has reported the mounting swine flu threat responsible for such a massive increase.

Spencer Parker, director of product management at ScanSafe, stated that the firm is globally scanning for the users who are not within the corporate network and so far they have recorded a substantial upsurge in the number of home workers in just two months, particularly in the US and UK, reported infosecurity on July 15, 2009.

Parker stated that several organizations are looking forward to execute a disaster recovery plan with swine flu continuing to spread across the world. As a part of this plan, they are preparing for the overt hike in the number of home workers. He further stated that roaming or home workers constitute about 5% of the Internet traffic secured by the firm in normal times, but currently this rate has gone up to 15%.

Parker predicted that with the number of home workers surging at such tremendous rate, cybercriminals will not take long to exploit the fear of people about this deadly disease. It is understood that any information regarding swine flu will attract huge user traffic, thus the cybercriminals are busy devising spoof sites to fulfill their malicious intent.

An earlier research by ScanSafe showed that roaming employees are 8.5 times more susceptible to visit illicit file sharing websites in comparison of their colleagues working in the office. Moreover, such workers are 2.5 times more prone to logon to pornography sites; thereby, they increase the threat of legal liability for their employers and expose them to malware attacks.

ScanSafe recommends employers to be cautious as the increasing prevalence of swine flu is promoting more people to work from home. They should make sure that they have appropriate technology in place to allow only legal use of Internet and to block malware for the people working from home. They should also educate their staff on the practices that are best from the perspective of information security.

Related article: Hawaiian Legislature Hobbled By Computer Virus

» SPAMfighter News - 8/8/2009