A study carried out by PandaLabs of more than 1.5 million users revealed that almost a quarter (23%) of home computers with an up-to-date security solution installed was infected with malware - viruses, Trojans, rootkits and others.
The underlying reason for this shocking statistic is that traditional security solutions are no longer enough to protect users' computers from the increasing number of malware samples that appear every day.
Panda Security has launched the Infected or Not campaign (http://www.infectedornot.com) to educate users about the new malware threat. Infected or Not will enable users to run a free security assessment on their PCs, using the largest malware database in the world of more than 11 million malware samples.
"Most people think that all security solutions are the same, and that simply having a traditional anti-virus installed means that you're completely protected," explains Jeremy Matthews, head of Panda Security's sub-Saharan operations. "The truth couldn't be more different. Malware has evolved so much that a user of a traditional anti-virus solution is now really vulnerable to virus attacks. People are unnecessarily falling prey to identity and confidential data being stolen, with their credit cards and bank accounts being raided."
Panda can detect malware that has evaded other solutions because of its newly-developed MegaDetection, a five-pillar security model that includes permanent protection (thanks to daily automatic updates), proactive protection with TruPrevent Technologies to detect unknown threats through behavioural analysis, in-depth online scanning with Panda ActiveScan Pro to detect sophisticated malicious code that can evade traditional anti-virus solutions, 24/7 technical services and, lastly, Collective Intelligence, the new security focus.
Collective Intelligence is based on the collection of information concerning malware from the Internet community and the automated processing of this data in new data centres.
"Because the knowledge is accumulated on Panda's servers and not on customers' computers, Collective Intelligence maximises the detection capacity of Panda solutions while reducing clients' bandwidth usage and resource consumption. This not only provides far greater security but also simplifies the protection process," says Matthews.
Currently, Panda's Collective Intelligence network comprises four million computers. The knowledge accumulated in the system is composed of more than 11 million malware samples, and over 100 million analysed programs. In 2007, more than 94% of all new threats that reached PandaLabs were detected through Collective Intelligence. At present, the system has a malware knowledge base of more than a hundred million bytes.
"We encourage everyone who has a PC to scan it for free on InfectedorNot.com," concludes Matthews. "It's free, it's fast and, should you be lucky enough to be virus-free, it may just win you an iPod."
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