Kama Sutra puts IT security firms in tricky position

The IT security industry has come in for fresh criticism over the hype which has surrounded the Nyxem virus – also known as Kama Sutra.

For the past few days security vendors had been sending out warnings about an email 'time bomb' waiting to go off on 3 February but just about the time systems should have been grinding to a halt – in accordance with some of the worst-case scenarios - many stopped to reflect on the fact that little appeared to have happened.

Now one antivirus expert is urging users to ditch any notion they may have had that forewarned was forearmed in this case - and has hit out at industry over-hype, claiming most users were protected three weeks ago.

Russ Cooper, senior information security analyst at Cybertrust, told silicon.com: "There has been way too much hype around this. There was nothing that anybody had to do about this and yet the hype is going to have proven very expensive and very costly in terms of the time and resources this will have cost companies."

He said the impact of that could be felt further on down the line. "Management executives cannot now ignore the fact this will cost a lot in terms of overtime and resources, and for what?" said Cooper, who argued that many of the remedial measures suggested by security companies in the run-up to 3 February were unnecessary, given most will have had up-to-date protection.

Cooper said too many companies had been swept along by the opportunity for media coverage and too many media companies, particularly in the mainstream, had been seduced by the 'time bomb' angle.