Companies stay vigilant for post-Y2K virus threat

Businesses are being warned to stay alert for virus attacks this week, despite a quiet millennium period.

The virus 'Armageddon', predicted by many vendors for the festive break failed to materialise, although some companies reacted to the threat by shutting down email servers to avoid problems.

"Most companies stopped sending email anyway, because no one was in the office, and some just shut their servers down," said Alex Shipp, virus technologist at ISP, Star Internet.

Security specialist, Symantec, identified 12 new viruses between 27 December and 31 December. But according to the company's technical director, Kevin Street, only three - W95.LoveSong.998, VBS.Tune and Wscript.KakWorm - were found in the corporate environment.

"One of the positive things about the millennium was that people updated their virus solutions, so we didn't see problems spreading," Street claimed.

Graham Cluely, senior technical consultant, at virus vendor Sophos, called the Christmas and millennium period "very quiet" and added the company had seen no more infections than usual. "It's highly inappropriate to send out alerts for viruses not Y2K-related, and not in the wild," he added.

But according Shipp, companies should still be on the alert: "If the virus writers have got their heads screwed on they won't have released their viruses before the millennium - they will have waited until people are back to work. So I think we've got to keep our vigilance up now and make sure that we're still protected."

And according to Shipp it's not just new viruses that pose a threat. Star Internet's security centre caught 2,590 viruses in December, a record for the month, and stopped 28 infections in the first few hours of business yesterday.

Symantec's Street agreed: "It's still quite early, we are only one business day into the year. The telling time will be between now and three weeks from now. There is always something that can be missed."