London, UK - 4 March 2004, 14:00 GMT - "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away... It is a period of war. A malware tsunami has struck from three rebel bases, and a major blow to the Digital Empire has been dealt. During the battle, rebels and criminal syndicates have managed to uncover critical vulnerabilities across the galactic network.

An army of zombie computers is being amassed with enough power to cripple the entire Digital Empire. Pursued by the malware writers with new variants, the anti-virus generals have issued instructions to update malware definitions every hour as opposed to every day. The critical issue of computer maintenance has now become an insurmountable task..."

The trouble is that this problem is not occurring in a galaxy far far away but right here and now in the global digital eco-system.

How is an hourly update regime tenable in an organisation with thousands of computers? As a result of the malware tsunami in the last four days, a new and dangerous point has been reached in the global digital eco-system. New malware variants are released and proliferate ever faster and as a result there is a lag before they are added to virus definition records, during which they cannot be recognised by anti-virus systems. The majority of anti-virus solutions currently on offer are therefore no longer viable in countering malware tsunamis.

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