Sophos: One Million Viruses And Counting Fast(er)

How many viruses have been created over the past twenty years? Close to a million, according to security company Sophos. How many of those appeared in the last six months? More than a quarter of them!According to Sophos, the pop in the number of unique pieces of malware created in the past six months is a consequence of better protection and faster response to emerging threats.

In other words, the bad guys have had to get faster -- if not better -- at pumping out malware in order to have a shot at getting some of it through our rapidly evolving defenses and responses.

As a result, you can bet that when we hit the one million virus mark later this year -- by Sophos's prediction -- we won't linger there long.

Indeed, if the trend the company identifies continues -- a couple of hundred thousand new malwares every few months -- we'll be looking at a sort of McDonald's Over xxxx Sold situation.

Sooner or later -- and almost undoubtedly sooner -- we'll just stop counting because there are just too many coming at us too fast (and with luck and diligence being rebuffed just as quickly) to make counting them worthwhile.