Destructive attacks by viruses are on the increase and causing considerable financial losses. It is increasingly difficult to keep up with the new worms that spread around the globe in a day. This only serves to underline the need to use anti-virus systems that can be updated on real time. The Finnish company F-Secure hunts and destroys these new threats to society.

Computers control areas such as the financial world, transport, energy management, communications and leisure time. Non-functioning data systems and networks cause big financial losses and may in the worst instances paralyze society's important functions. Awareness of the necessity for data security has increased worldwide along with recent virus threats, hacking and terrorist strikes. Feudal society came close to extinction at the hands of the Black Death. Now the information society is in danger.

Finland is combatting this danger and setting the pace in data security. A committee on information security matters was the first in the world to publish a national information security report covering the whole of society. This is the basis for a information security strategy that will be ready at the end of the year. It is also one the first national strategies in the world.

F-Secure gives medication and protection

There was a dramatic start to 2003. The Finnish company F-Secure gave computer users a warning about four new Windows worms that had spread worldwide. F-Secure notices several new viruses each day, so this was not in itself big news. What was unusual, however, was that four new viruses which had all managed to spread over a wide area were found in a couple of days. F-Secure's anti-virus programme stopped all these worms.

This is the reason that F-Secure is a leading supplier of centralized anti-virus solutions. F-Secure's product range includes anti-virus, data and network encryption products and also firewall products for all the important hardware platforms at companies, from work stations to network devices and servers to wireless pocket computers.

In addition to repelling viruses, F-Secure protects important information. F-Secure File Crypto is used to protect and encrypt confidential information on US taxpayers that is stored on portable and desk computers. The technical solution produced for the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guarantees taxpayers and companies that their tax information will be kept under the control of the tax authorities completely unchanged and inaccessible from the outside.

>> www.f-secure.com

>> RFID set to change everyday life (19.2.2003)