Yes, that’s really how much we individual users invest in protecting our lives against malwares. But, if you thought that number looked scary, how does $114 billion sound to you? That’s what it costs for organizations to keep themselves safe against malicious software, according to a latest study conducted by IDC in partnership with Microsoft.
Nearly one-third of on consumers and about 30 percent of businesses are likely to face a malware attack. Such attacks can either cause damage on several degrees or even disable the computer systems. In a recent press release, Microsoft India has even put a number to the amount of effort it will take for us to recover from a malware attack – 1.5 billion hours is how much consumers will spend on this.
So next time you decide to install a pirated copy of some software, spare some thought to these numbers and what’s at stake for you. It may be cheap, but the low price comes with high risks of your computer getting attacked by viruses, Trojans, etc. as well.
1,104 consumer respondents, 937 businesses and 268 CIOs and IT Managers from across 10 countries were surveyed during the exercise. Among the respondents, 32 percent had bought their PCs without any OS and 12 percent did not install any security updates on their systems. Furthermore, 30 percent of consumers surveyed indicated that they never installed any security updates, and almost 70 percent of them had experienced issues while using pirated software.
A significant majority of 64 percent respondents who had installed counterfeit software had experienced security related issues, while 45 percent of respondents using counterfeit software had experienced slowing down of their systems, leading to the uninstallation of the software. The biggest issues with using counterfeit software included data loss (48%) and identity theft (29%).
Another worrying trend the survey unearthed was the high number of corporate users who downloaded unauthorized software onto their workstations, making the corporate networks even more vulnerable.
