Previously, IT managers and other technology professionals believed that their firewalls and other formidable security measures would protect them from the scourge of spyware. But nothing could protect those systems when employees downloaded infected programs and installed them on their workstations. (For this reason, many businesses now strictly curtail such downloading activity by employees).Beginning around 2005, they began noticing a marked increase in calls to IT help desks, complaints ranging from the dreaded pop-up ads to slow PC performance. Spyware can cost businesses as much as $350 per PC to fix, when all costs are factored in (http://www.newsweek.com/id/56465).

But business may be partly to blame for these woes. As noted in Newsweek, corporate advertising spending trickles down from the big firms to smaller marketing companies who are paid by the click on banner ads and the like on websites.

But these are merely a nuisance when the true potential of spyware’s destructiveness has yet to be realized. Theft of passwords and user IDs open the door for corporate espionage and other forms of corporate crime, one where trade secrets and other valuable intellectual property are at risk of theft. It is little wonder that businesses see spyware os one of the top five threats to their security, and why anti-spyware software spending has become a multi-billion dollar business. In fact, internet security provider FaceTime Communications, surveyed more than 1,000 IT managers and end users, finding that spyware and other unsanctioned downloads result in average monthly costs of $130,000 (http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/html/bankinfosec_article16.html). The survey also found that spyware incursions appear to be growing at a rate twice that of computer virus incidents

Increasingly, enterprise applications are being downloaded, which means the browser has become one of the most important conduits through which critical business supplies are transmitted. When the browser is infected, the results are often disastrous.

In 2006, more than 1,300 people in Oregon were exposed to identity theft when an employee of the state’s department of revenue downloaded Spyware. He was using his office PC to surf porn sites, and downloaded a Trojan virus. For four months, names, addresses, and Social Security numbers were recorded and transmitted to the Trojan’s architect.

The Oregon Department of Revenue has banned employees from accessing Web sites for personal use, but such stringent regulations are impractical for most businesses. Many jobs require unfettered access to the internet, and spyware and viruses can be accidently downloaded from even legitimate-looking sites. Hackers can establish a blog on a legitimate host site and post Trojans or keylogging software to the page.

Spyware not only steals data, but also internet bandwidth, stopping the normal flow of traffic through the network. As noted earlier, spyware greatly compromises a computer’s processing speed, bringing the system to a crawl. It can also cause major system instability, leading to more frequent crashes. Caring for corrupted PCs can account for almost 20% or more of a company’s IT Help Desk resources (http://www.stopzilla.com/learning/CostOfSpywareToYourBusiness.do).