Virus crisis: 2001 will beat this year for attacks

According to an end of year report by MessageLabs, an ASP specialising in internet messaging, 2000 was a very successful year for computer viruses - and next year will be worse.

Alex Shipp, chief anti-virus technologist at MessageLabs, said: "The viruses are getting smarter and more lethal. Organisations that rely on having a single piece of anti-viral software are leaving themselves wide open to some pretty nasty surprises in the new year."

When the Love Bug struck in May, one in every 700 emails contained a virus. According to Shipp, the final three months of this year showed comparable levels of virus penetration.

By the end of November, MessageLabs claims it had intercepted some 155,528 email viruses, which equates to about one every three minutes. Yet with a decline in media coverage since the Love Bug, it is possible that users will revert to complacency.

Jason Holloway, UK general manager at F-Secure, believes users should update their anti virus software "at least daily, even hourly - you can't wait for your monthly CD to arrive by post". He added: "We don't expect to see any particularly nasty bugs over Christmas but we suspect that around March or April there will be a new set of viruses."

Denis Zenkin, head of corporate communications at Kaspersky Lab, said: "About 85 per cent of all virus attacks that were reported to us were performed via email. Commonly used anti-virus pattern-sensitive scanners are no longer sufficient; integrity checkers and behaviour blockers have become an essential part of virus protection. These are much more efficient and we think this is the future of virus protection."

The warning for the Christmas period and coming year is to be vigilant and up to date with anti-virus software installations.