UK users less concerned over security than two years ago

Users in the UK are showing less concern over the seriousness of internet threats despite a rise in the level of malware, according to a new study.

The survey of 1,200 corporate users in the UK, US, Germany and Japan found that in the UK respondents perceived security threats to be less serious in 2007 than a couple of years ago. But research from anti-virus company Trend Micro's research arm TrendLabs found that internet threats had in fact increased by 163 per cent between December 2005 and November 2006.

Respondents in the US tended to take security threats much more seriously than those in the UK. The research found that 60 per cent of US respondents said they viewed spyware as a serious threat compared with only 48 per cent of UK end users. The survey also found that 48 per cent of US end users thought spam was dangerous while only 27 per cent of UK end users thought spam was a serious threat.

The survey said that users may be showing a lack of concern as many new infections are now "silent and invisible". Globally, viruses, spam and spyware continue to be the security threats end users are most aware of. In Japan, spyware awareness increased from 76 per cent in 2005 to 93 per cent in 2007. In the UK the percentage of users encountering spyware actually fell from 42 per cent in 2005 to 26 per cent in 2007.

Nearly half of all respondents who said they had been victims of spyware or a phishing scam thought their IT department could have prevented them from being victims.

The survey found that identity theft, loss of personal information and privacy violations were the biggest concerns related to phishing, pharming and spyware. The story was different for spam, viruses and trojans where productivity loss was the main concern.

"In addition to being an inconvenience to end users, spam and phishing attacks often include links to sites hosting malicious threats such as spyware," the report's authors said. "Infections through this route pose a serious threat because victims of such attacks become vulnerable to personal and corporate information theft."

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