26,000,000 Viruses in 2010, really? What this means for you.

I was recently was at a conference where, over coffee with a colleague from a competitor, the figure of 26,000,000 was floated for the number of viruses created or yet to be created, and unleashed on an already beleaguered public this year.  This number is based off what the industry is generally seeing in the ‘wild’ so far this year and is being telegraphed somewhat given that your year is not yet complete.

The number seems a little high to me given from what we see but I’ll concede that we still think it’s going to trend out north of 20,000,000 this year. I suppose the difference becomes meaningless at some point and I suspect that point is well before the 20,000,000-virus mark. Presented with such a daunting number the first question I ask is, “that’s interesting, but what does it mean for me?”.

When it comes to encountering computer viruses where you end up often depends heavily on where you start.  Behavior certainly plays a role in risk here but for the sake of simplicity we will avoid discussing it for this article. Each user has some basic exposure variables that fall outside their control. The first such variable is where you live. Generally speaking, countries with heavily built up Internet infrastructure and large populations will see much heavier threat activity than other locations.  Brazilian users for example are (according to our data) 5 times more likely to experience a threat in a given year than an American user while American users are 2 times more likely to experience a threat in the same period when compared to Japanese users. Western Europe and Canada look much like the US when considered from an aggregate viewpoint.  The other factor is previous exposure. Simply put if you have seen viruses in the last 30 days you are 5 times more likely to encounter one in the next 30 days than someone who has not encountered a threat in the same period of time.

All of this helps set the stage but still does not directly answer how you, personally, are positioned. To answer this, I looked to our data in the Immunet Community. Before calculating out the data I shed the notion of location to provide a simple average. Using a test group of 250,000 users in our global Community we see an average of 82,000 threats a week. These 82,000 threats are seen by 1/3rd of our user base. This means that 1 in 3 of our users see a threat monthly (on average). Projecting our data over a year (using a variety of calculations) our users should be expected to see between 2 and 3 viruses a year. This number is being presented in very simple terms but it gives you a mile high view of your real exposure. 

In summary this means that of the 26,000,000 million possible threats this year, your real exposure is to a small handful of them. Keep appropriate Anti-Virus software installed and be diligent with your online behavior and you’re well prepared to avoid a negative outcome.