Viruses are getting smarter and more prevalent
Security company McAfee has launched a subscription service that uses the web to protect a PC against viruses and attacks by computer vandals.
For a monthly fee, subscribers get anti-virus software and a firewall designed to keep personal information on a PC secure.
Research commissioned by McAfee has revealed that many net users are not doing enough to protect themselves against the most common types of attacks.
Hack attacks
Atri Chatterjee, a spokesman for McAfee, said although a lot of people used stand-alone anti-virus programs many forgot to update them regularly, leaving them vulnerable to viruses that exploited recently found loopholes.
A study by anti-virus company MessageLabs found that the number of viruses circulating on the net has leapt in the last year.
In 2000, MessageLabs was stopping a virus every 700 e-mails. Now, the figure is one virus in every 370 messages.
Research has found that those who use broadband net connections are at real risk of attack from malicious hackers and computer vandals.
Because broadband connections are "always on", attackers typically have more time to find and try to penetrate computers linked to the net in this way.
Computers online via a broadband link have proved very popular with vandals who use them as proxies to carry out "denial of service attacks" in which a target machine is bombarded with bogus data packets.
Remote control
For £17.95 a year, McAfee will take on the burden of updating anti-virus software for customers to ensure that they stay protected against viruses.
For an extra £20.95 per annum, subscribers get a firewall managed remotely by McAfee that keeps out those that want to harvest personal information from a computer or recruit that machine for a future attack.
Both programs are updated, managed and monitored via the web by McAfee.
"Three out of four people are surfing naked and are open to all kinds of hacking attempts," said Mr Chatterjee.
The McAfee security subscription service has been running in the US since April 1999 and now has more than 1.2 million customers.
The service is available now in the UK and Germany and will be rolled out to 12 more countries in 2002.