BKIS has released research on the influence of computer viruses on Vietnamese users in 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, which said that Vietnamese computer users lost VND327 billion (US$ 19.2 million) per month.

BKIS’s Director Nguyen Tu Quang said the research was conducted beginning in January 1, 2009, based on an online survey on BKIS website, with over 7,000 participants.

According to the work, 97% of computers in Vietnam were infected with a virus at least once and USB was the most popular source of viruses. Up to 90% of users had to re-install the operating systems after their computers were attacked.

Some 49.28% of users said when their computers were infected with viruses they asked for help from their friends or fixed the computers themselves. This is a bad habit because these people are not professional enough to deal with the problem.

It is interesting that 91% of survey participants said that it is necessary to use authentic anti-virus software because free or cracked software products are less effective.

However, over 70% of users forgot to lock their computers before they leave their table, which enables others to use their computers illegally, steal important data or install malware into computers.

Up to 58% of users didn’t carefully protect their computer passwords. Losing passwords means that they can lose data anytime.

In a similar research by BKIS in 2006, only 26% of users knew where software gaps were and updated corrective versions. The rate rose to 49.45% in 2007 and 60% in 2008. However, only 23% of users regularly updated their computers with corrective versions.

According to BKIS, in the first 4 months of 2009, 318 websites belonging to Vietnamese agencies and businesses were penetrated by hackers. Of this number, 215 cases were confirmed as originating from domestic hackers and 103 from overseas hackers.

BKIS also discovered serious lapses in security in the websites of 74 businesses, banks, online newspapers and agencies which belong to the government.

At the beginning of this year, there were 15,054 new strains of computer viruses detected in Vietnam, including 15,038 from foreign countries and 16 from Vietnam. These viruses have infected 21 million computers.