Analysis of Antivirus Software Usage among Organizations in Niger State

Abstract

The use of computers and the internet in many organizations is growing rapidly. Many organization systems are prone to viruses due to their usage of the internet and other external drives, which can easily transmit viruses. We aim to assess the proportion of organizations with updated anti-virus software in Tafa L. G. A Niger and to determine the common virus among the organizations. We used a good structure questionnaire to conduct a cross-sectional survey among 60 organizations in Tafa L. G. A. Niger state. Sixty organizations were surveyed; fifteen (25%) were in educational organizations, eight (13.3%) were in business organizations, nine (15%) were in religious originations, five (8.3%) were in political organization, eleven (18.3%) were government organization and twelve (20%) were in private organization. Thirty-eight (63.3%) organizations surveyed reported failure to secure their systems by regularly updating their antivirus software against virus threats in contrast to twenty (36.6%). The top three reported computer virus infections in organizations in Tafa L. G. A. were: Trojan horse, 20 (33.3%), Brontok worm, 15(25.0%), and; Ravmon log.exe, 6(10.0%).  10(16.6%) organizations whose computers were recently infected could not remember the name of the virus. The top-three anti-virus software in use by organizations in Tafa L. G. A. included: MacAfee antivirus, 30 (50.0%); Kaspersky antivirus, 10 (16.6%); and Norton antivirus 10 (16.6). The common barrier by most organizations in updating their computer is: Busy schedule 20(33.3%), Lack of knowledge about antivirus updating 25(41.6%), high cost of genuine antivirus software 15(25%) were barriers to updating antivirus software. Anti-virus software should be regularly updated among organizations due to the increase of the virus in many external drives and the internet. Organizations should be careful in making use of external drives and should be careful in downloading information from the internet with an unknown source to avoid the downloading virus.