London, UK - 24 August 2004, 17:45 GMT - There are an estimated 600 million Windows based Personal Computers (PCs) across the world of which over 200 million run Windows XP, according to the latest estimates from Microsoft. Therefore, the release of the new Service Pack Two (SP2) - designed to patch many critical security vulnerabilities in Windows XP - is a subject of direct relevance to geographic populations and corporations greater than most countries on earth and yet there is no consensus on the optimum methodology for dealing with this necessary installation. According to the latest available research from mi2g's SIPS database, the economic damage from malware proliferation in 2004 including MyDoom, NetSky and SoBig is estimated to lie between $157 billion and $192 billion worldwide or expressed another way, it works out to between $261 and $320 - average $290 - of productivity losses worldwide per Windows PC. This latest estimate of losses per PC attributable to malware proliferation demonstrates the validity of the algorithm 'Economic Valuation Engine for Damage Analysis' (EVEDA), which forms the basis for the digital risk assessment research carried out by the mi2g Intelligence Unit.

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