70 Percent Have No Defence
You learn something new every day. From this article (gleaned from Slash, of course), I learned a startling fact about computer security.
Author David Sheets tells us:
We rely on alarms and fences to minimise threats to our physical selves, yet most of us still don’t extend the same protection to our computers. It’s believed that today, even with thousands of computer viruses floating around — threats can enter a new computer within four minutes of first getting online — fully 70 percent of computer users still don’t employ antivirus measures or firewalls, or don’t maintain the ones they have.
I can’t verify the 70 percent number, but it is awfully high (I had it in my head for some reason that it was somewhere around 50 percent). If this number is true, it explains why viruses, worms, and the like, are so effective at infecting such a vast number of host computers. 70 percent of the hosts are doing nothing to stop them.
You put chain on your bicycle. You lock the door to your house when you leave for the day. You lock the doors on your car when you park it. We do all these things instinctively, but yet so many people don’t to the similar procedures with their computer.
Why don’t they? It’s because nobody told them. Everybody selling computers is too busy selling the productivity features and not worrying about the security features. Nobody is telling the end-users that security is a problem for them too.
Well, that’s going to have to change. It’s going to suck, but it has to happen.
