Many Businesses Fail to Use Antivirus Protection

Call it being anti-“anti-virus.”  Many American businesses fail to use antivirus software and other malware protection schemes.

While nearly half of all small and medium U.S. businesses (SMBs) have been infected by viruses or malware this year, many are still operating without an Internet safety net. Thirty-one percent are operating without anti-spam software, 23 percent have no anti-spyware and 15 percent have no firewall, according to a recent survey of 1,500 American companies.

Dan Olds, an analyst a Gabriel Consulting Group, said told BusinessNewsDaily he was rather shocked by the study.

“I’m surprised that many businesses are so horribly under-protected,” he said. “One of the things going on is that these guys are thinking that they’re so small that no one would target them. And they’re right—no one is targeting them specifically. But the vast majority of these [attacks] are automated, essentially robots that go out scouring the Internet to find any unpatched vulnerability that they can breach. Their perception of cybercrime is that there are Mafiosos out there looking at specific businesses to try and target but that’s not the case at all.”

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