In 2004 and 2005, the AOL/NCSA surveys revealed a significant gap between security perceptions versus reality. Many consumers thought they were correctly protected against malware, when in fact, they were not.

These days, McAfee and its competitors propose and provide automatic updates, but the problem is still very topical. The very latest McAfee/NCSA survey shows the scope of this issue. And unfortunately, improvement has been poor in the last two years. If I dared, I would say the situation is perhaps worse because minimum security needs daily update not weekly and there is more malware written today than ever before.

2004 2005 2007

Percent of respondents who claim to have up to date AV protection:

 71% (note) 68% (note) 92%

Percent of respondents who either have no anti-virus protection or have not updated their protection within the past week:

 67% 56% 49%

Note: Percent of respondents saying they update their anti-virus on a weekly/daily basis.

The need to educate consumers is more than ever necessary with nearly nine in ten Americans online to use their computer for banking, stock trading or reviewing personal medical information.

The McAfee/NCSA Online Safety Study is available here. It starts with “Think Your Home Computer Is Safe? Think Again” and contains very interesting data regarding Americans’ opinions of their computer security vs the reality.