Kaspersky Lab has said that the number of malicious programs it had detected, which stood at 2.2 million at the end of 2007, will jump to over 20 million by the end of this year.

David Emm of Kaspersky Lab said: "In addition to the quantity, the quality of malicious programs is also improving.

"New and more complex samples are emerging that demonstrate a wide range of hostile behaviour and distribution methods," Emm continued.

However, other security firms obviously use different metrics to calculate the number of viruses in circulation.

DriveSentry has said that it has logged more than one million viruses in the last three years, and Symantec's recent Internet Security Report for 2007 reached a similar conclusion.

John Safa, DriveSentry's chief technology officer, explained that though there were one million viruses in circulation, there could be several different strains of the same virus, which accounted for Kaspersky's gloomy prediction.

DriveSentry has also launched a new product to guard removable drives and MP3 players from malware.

Recent incidents where devices such as USB keys and digital photoframes had been infected with malware meant that consumers were increasingly in need of such protection, said Safa.

DriveSentry's GoAnywhere anti-virus software is currently available through PC World.

www.kaspersky.com
www.drivesentry.com
www.symantec.com

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