AOL and National CyberSecurity Alliance User Stats

Short news piece over at CNET yesterday reporting on weaknesses in user security from a recent study by AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance. Link to story here.

Study found that 81% of surveyed users lack at least one of the 'big 3' security apps - a firewall, antivirus and antispyware protection. A lot of education still needs to be done by vendors, ISPs, the media, schools, savvy users - you name it. Every link (no pun intended! ;>) has a role to play in helping people to be safe online.

While 44% of respondents didn't have a properly configured firewall, 56% of surveyed users either didn't have antivirus software or hadn't updated it within the last week. Given that antivirus products have been around for far longer than PC firewall products, I'd have expected the gulf in those numbers to have been wider. In other words, I'd expect more folks to have antivirus after all these years just because conventional wisdom had so much longer to push antivirus.

Then again, there are at least two great personal firewalls out there for free and I only know of one great antivirus product. Anyone know of more?

Finally, as with all surveys, you really have to read the questionnaire and understand the methodology. The survey also found that the number of PCs with spyware or adware installed dropped from 80% last year to 61% this year. Given all the activity we've all witnessed w/sneaky spyware and adware as well as increasingly sophisticated programming techniques used by those malware creators, I find it hard to believe in such a dramatic decline.