Blaster top as virus epidemic sweeps UK.

Around half of UK businesses suffered from virus infection or denial of services attacks during the last year, a new survey shows. This has risen from 41% in 2002 and just 16% in 2000. These are among the initial findings from the 2004 Department of Trade and Industry's biennial Information Security Breaches Survey, conducted by a consortium led by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Key findings from the telephone survey of some 1,000 companies include:

* Companies are increasingly vulnerable to attack with 89% of businesses (and virtually all large companies) sending email across the internet, compared with 77% in 2002;

* 72% of all companies surveyed had received infected emails or files in the last year. For large companies this rises to 83%;

* Most companies have virus protection--93% of those surveyed, and 99% of large

* Despite this, 50% of UK businesses (and 68% of large companies) suffered from virus infection or denial of services attacks during the last year;

* Blaster was by far the biggest culprit, causing a third of all infections (and over half of those in large companies);

* Two-thirds of companies polled that had experienced any type of security breach cited a virus infection as their worst of the year;

* Damage from virus incidents varied from less than a day's disruption and no cost to major disruption to services for a month or more.

These findings are published in a fact sheet--'Viruses and malicious code'--sponsored by Qualys.

www.qualys.com