Study Analyzes Users’ Perception and Experiences of Security Threats

Trend Micros Inc. has declared results of the study it had conducted to assess what the corporate end users perceive of and experience from security threats. The study compares with a similar research carried out in 2005.

The study gathered responses from 1,200 end users of corporate computers across U.K, U.S, Japan, and Germany, and analyzed them to draw a report from Trend Micro TrendLabsSM worldwide threat-research network and also compared the findings to the similar study held in 2005.

Both the study findings and Trend Micro research have found that spam has increased over 2005 to 2007. But hardly many interviewees from the U.S. admitted they received spam. Respondents from U.K. in general believed security threats were less severe in 2007 than it was in 2005. On the contrary, German respondents said that they found 2007 threats more serious than those of 2005.

End users worldwide are increasingly becoming aware of the continued presence of viruses, spyware, and spam. In Japan, particularly, the spyware awareness increased significantly to 93% in 2007 up from 76% in 2005. While 4 in 10 interviewees in the majority countries said they received a lot of spam from April 2007 to June 2007 unlike that indicated in the 2005-study, respondents from U.S. reported a drop in the level of spam to 72% in 2007 down from 84% in 2005.

TrendLabs' latest data show that web-based security threats have grown six times over the past two years of 2006-07. Further, Asia is experiencing a worsening situation. It is more vulnerable to such threats as compared to the U.S. and Europe.

Covering nearly the first half of 2007 Asia witnessed a double spike in web infections, the fastest increase observed so far. This significant rise is from 22% during the last six months of 2006. Comparing with other regions, U.S. witnessed a drop in infection rates from 60% to 40% while Europe experienced a fall from 20% to 10%. Web threats are increasingly targeting Asian economies, said David Spenhoff, VP-Enterprise Marketing, Trend Micro. Spenhoff accounts this to growing business prosperity in the region, as per the news reported by The Economic Times on June 27, 2007.

Related article: Stock Spamming On the Rise

» SPAMfighter News - 7/7/2007