Download Squad

Baseline put up an interesting piece about a Cisco Systems survey showing that "56 percent of remote workers using enterprise PCs to access the Internet say their perception of Internet security increased." Which, interestingly enough, is at a time when malicious code threats are on the rise, according to, at least, this Symantec Internet Security Threat Report (PDF).

Granted, the Symantec source may not be totally unbiased, but the reported rise of malicious code being up 185% in the first 6 months of 2007 compared to the last 6 months of 2006, would suggest that any confidence in security getting better is largely based on perception alone.

Apparently, the big reason why remote workers have a heightened confidence in Internet security is because they are not responsible for the security on their enterprise machines, since someone else is technically in charge of it. That, bundled with a mass migration of services such as banking to the Internet, seems to give people false confidence that the Internet is getting "safer."

But what are the perceptions of Internet security for the average end user? With some recommending to stop using antivirus software altogether due to lack of stopping power and drain on processing performance, are we being naive when using the Internet for sensitive transactions? Maybe, but it's interesting to see how marketing for security software and new uses for the Internet are giving it an aura of safety beyond what is perhaps merited.

Or maybe we've got it all wrong, and Internet security is indeed getting better despite an influx of malicious code.

[via Slashdot]