Security threatens more mideast computers

The company claims that globally, it finds 7,000 to 8,000 malware threats every day, although many pose a danger to only certain regions due to the language barrier. For that reason, it now updates its software protection every few minutes, in an effort to ensure customers always have the latest definitions installed.

Among the threats on the increase include the downloading of fake security software, often found through online searches, which place a Trojan on a computer when they are installed. Equally, fake multimedia codecs often hide threats that infect a PC once installed.

Con Mallon, Regional Product Marketing Director, Consumer at Symantec, said 80% of the threats the company comes across are designed to steal personal information which can then be sold on. 'It's like a chess game, but now we are playing speed chess,' he told AME Info during Gitex in Dubai.

The problems such regular installations pose is that the software becomes intrusive and can tie up system resources, slowing down a PC. Particularly as in its research, 70% of customers are running systems with 1GB or less of memory.

The latest version of it software, launched in early September, will update its anti-virus definitions or run scans when the PC is idle, meaning it only takes up resources when the user is not.

Another change in the software is Norton Insight, which takes an almost Peer to Peer type approach to security. Mallon said rather than scanning all applications on every computer, it records findings from other PCs that it has scanned, to cut down on the work required.

It takes a snap shot of a computer's applications and the version numbers of the software it is running and compares this to its database of known threats. Once satisfied that the software versions in use are safe, it then scans the rest of the PC.

Symantec estimates that most PCs run the same sets of software, so once definitions have been checked against its database, only about 20% or so of the other applications on a PC need to be checked. This, he said, speeds up the time it takes to check a computer.

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