More than 17% of the world’s PCs are unprotected
June 9, 2012 by Network Security
Filed under News
A portion of PCs all over the world are vulnerable to cyber attacks – this is what a study revealed. The said study, which was conducted by McAfee researchers, gathered data from voluntary scans that came from roughly 27-28 million computers a month. The results indicated that 17% of the computers around the world have been browsing the internet virtually unprotected against cyber attacks that could lead to identity theft, data loss, and other hacking-related mishaps that PC owners could encounter. 24 countries participated in the said study, and the United States belonged in the top 5 countries that were least protected.
In addition to identity theft and data loss, accessing the internet without proper protection for your PC could lead to it being infested with unwanted software and various viruses.
It is important to note that having an internet security program or antivirus software installed on your PC doesn’t guarantee you safety. The said programs should always be checked to make sure they are kept up-to-date with the latest virus database and known virus signatures to make sure they are still effective and are not obsolete and utterly useless.
As the research revealed, 19.32% of users from the United States alone have unprotected computers. Also, it revealed that a number of the computers that were scanned had either expired or disabled protective software.
Though not completely avoidable, vulnerability to cyber attacks and malicious or unwanted software can be reduced by installing proper protective programs, and making sure that they are enabled and are updated regularly.
