UK heads EU spyware chart

The UK has more computers infected with spyware than any country in the European Union, research shows.

The country has replaced Ireland in the top spot, according to an international survey of 19,480 PCs by vendor Webroot.

Some 30.5 instances of spyware per 1,000 PCs were recorded in the UK, ahead of the 30.3 in Ireland, 29.3 in Lithuania and 26.5 in Latvia.

Forty of the companies surveyed admitted they had suffered a serious security breach resulting from spyware on their machines. In the consumer market, 89 per cent of PCs were found to contain spyware.

Webroot’s Daniel Mothersdale says the UK is an obvious target for spyware.

‘Over the last two quarters, Ireland and UK have been the worst affected countries in Europe,’ he said. ‘They both have a very big strength in terms of IT companies and wealth definitely makes them a target. But more of a factor is places where the economy is blossoming, such as the UK, Latvia and Lithuania.’

Mothersdale says UK businesses are now starting to take the problem of spyware much more seriously.

‘At the start of this year there was an amazing turnaround in the marketplace with companies saying that this is something they need to do something about,’ he said.

‘The enterprise sector has really sat up and recognised the problem in 2006. From a criminal point of view there is a movement at the moment to target the big organisations.’

A recent survey conducted by SafeNet found that 80 per cent of IT directors do not have full confidence in their security systems, and 39 per cent are most concerned about unauthorised access to systems by outsiders.

Thomas Raschke, senior analyst at Forrester Research, says although spyware has increased in recent times, it is unlikely to get much worse.

‘Spyware has picked up this year, but I think that now the tip of the wave on a global scale is a little bit behind us,’ he said.

‘The UK and Ireland will always be a target because they are English-speaking countries. People launching spyware are largely in the US, and target English language speaking countries.’

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