by a Thinker, Sailor, Blogger, Irreverent Guy from Madras

Emsisoft releases results of Malwarelympics 2012


Though India as usual in any form of Olympics scores low, this time it is good.  Emsisoft, the PC security solutions provider based in Austria has released yesterday a well timed statistics of PC infections detected by its Emsisoft Antimalware worldwide.

Unlike in the London Olympics, Malwarelympics 2012 places China in 13th position and Team GB in 11th position.  The USA which was placed 2nd in London Olympics till yesterday takes the Silver with Germany bagging the Bronze.  In a throwback to Soviet days, Russia takes the Gold with 9.32% infections reported.

Here is a screenshot of the (big) chart at Emsisoft website.

malwarelympcs_2012

Though the chart shows India with a low number of infected PCs w.r.t. the population, it is misleading.  As we’ve not been to live it down in many online forums and blogs, for a nation with 1.2 Bn people, the number of medals (4 in number - 1 Silver and 3 Bronzes) in London 2012 is pathetic.  So too is PC and internet penetration in India - ~121 Mn users versus ~245 Mn users in USA or ~513 Mn users in China.

A more realistic picture is given in the ‘Average number of infections per scanned PC’ graph which puts India in ‘High’ infection category, which surpasses both Russia (Low) and USA (Very Low).  The most interesting of the graphs (to me at least) is the ‘Most Common Methods of Infection’ graph.  Of the 7 listed, four methods of infection are user dependent / initiated / installed -
  • Outdated software,
  • USB sticks etc.,
  • Email attachments, and
  • Downloads from the net.
Thus a prudent user who takes care of his software and what he puts into the PC, by downloads, USD sticks or attachments is more likely to be safe from infections than one who is casual about it.  So, the Latest Versions page in my blog does make sense, doesn’t it?
0:-)<


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