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Worms nibble away at ISP profits

Mar 3, 2004 6:58AM PST

Last modified: March 3, 2004, 11:22 AM PST
By Dinesh C. Sharma
Special to CNET News.com

Worms are proving to be both a financial and managerial headache for Internet service providers.

Dealing with worms that travel over their networks could cost North American ISPs as much as $245 million in 2004, according to a study released Wednesday by peer-to-peer management company Sandvine. For service providers worldwide, the overall expense could reach $370 million. The totals include the cost of tactical response teams, swamped customer support resources, higher transit costs, and likely customer churn due to a loss of positive brand image over time.

Sandvine estimated that, on any given day, between 2 percent and 12 percent of traffic on service provider networks is malicious. Even on networks with good security, malicious traffic accounts for 5 percent of all data.

More: http://news.com.com/2100-7355-5169232.html?part=dht&tag=ntop

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