'69% antivirus users don't pay for it'

Even as the prices of security solutions for personal computer (PC)s have come down over the years, 69 per cent of users using antivirus software claimed they did not pay for these.

An overwhelming majority of Windows desktop (95 per cent) and laptop (92 per cent) users surveyed said they had some kind of antivirus program installed on their computer, ranging from basic solutions to total security products.

Increasing virus threats have made it necessary to have reliable multi-level protection on PC, to secure user data. More so in countries like India, where PC penetration is growing rapidly. A report from Avendus pegs India to have an estimated 80 million internet users, which represents a penetration of seven per cent of the population (17 per cent of the urban population).

Further, a BCG estimate suggests the number of PCs in India will reach 216 million by 2015. Some of the most common activities by Indian internet users include visiting websites, communicating on social networking sites and performing online financial operations.

The BCG report also suggested the total number of users transacting online in India was 8-10 million, and would increase to 38 million by 2015. Security software provider Kaspersky underlines that it expects to see even more banking Trojans that will attempt to steal financial information in the future.

A survey conducted by Kaspersky, along with O+K Research, polled about 11,000 users in South and North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, where it tried to assess how often respondents used pre-installed protection software.

According to the research, free antivirus programs were being used by two-thirds of users around the globe and though free solutions provide only basic security, incapable of blocking the most dangerous threats, many users think these provide sufficient security.

Many computers and laptops are sold with a pre-installed trial version of an antivirus program, usually of the Internet Security class. About 60 per cent of respondents made use of these programs, but after the trial period was over only 13 per cent purchased the license, while 30 per cent installed a different antivirus product. On average, 2 per cent of users take no action at the end of the trial period, i.e. their computers are left unprotected.

While the commercial value of pirated software (PC software including security software, OS etc) was $59 billion in 2010, but rose to $63 billion in 2011, which the Business Software Alliance (BSA) says was driven by the majority of PC shipments now going to emerging countries, including China, Russia, India, and Brazil. Notably, those countries have the world's fastest-growing technology markets, but also some of the highest levels of software piracy.