Progress, like most people say, always has its price. In the case of the Philippines, the dramatic rise of the broadband penetration in the country has also opened the floodgates to various
kinds of threats and malware.

This trend is clearly indicated in an annual report by US-based tech firm Symantec, which showed that as Internet and broadband grow in certain countries, their share of malicious activity also increases.

The report, released in April this year, ranked the Philippines as number 4 in Southeast Asia and number 10 in Asia Pacific region with the highest percentage of malicious activities.

It also held the same rank in terms of having the highest number of bot-infected computers by country.

Like robots being controlled from afar, bot-infected PCs can be used by attackers for denial-of-service (DoS), distributing spam and phishing attacks, distributing spyware, and adware, and propagating malicious code.

“Anti-virus software is simply not enough to neutralize these threats. Businesses here need to look at this problem in a different way,” Darric Hor, concurrent head for Singapore and the Philippines at Symantec, said in a recent press briefing.

Hor said Symantec, as the fourth largest independent software company in the world, has the capability to provide enterprises the ability to address these security problems.

The executive said the following statistics paint a grim scenario:

-- 192 percent growth in spam from 2007 to 2008

-- 5,471 vulnerabilities were discovered in 2008, 80 percent of which were easily exploitable and 90 percent of incidents would not have happened if systems had been patched

-- In 2008, there were 75,000 active bot-infected computers per day, up 31 percent from 2007

-- 90 percent of breaches in 2008 involved organized crime targeting corporate information

-- 88 percent of breaches were due to insider negligence.

Symantec, he said, pours 15 percent of its annual revenue to research and development. In 2008, it racked up global revenues of close to $6 billion.

Hor said Symantec is not merely an anti-virus firm and that the company’s business now spans storage, infrastructure risk and compliance, and business continuity, among others.