Countries with good national security teams (CERTs) and diligent ISPs show consistently lower rates of malware infection than those states that adopt a less paternalistic approach to security, a new analysis by Microsoft researchers has suggested.
According to statistics drawn from the company's widely-used Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), the countries which have shown notably lower infection rates of malware are Austria, Finland, Germany, and Japan.
Using the yardstick of computers cleaned per mile (CCM)*, Austria recorded a normalized rate of 3.3 CCM in Q4 2010, Finland 2.3, Germany 5.3, and Japan 2.3, all significantly below the global average taken from 116 countries of 8.3. These low rates have remained consistent since the first measurements taken in 2007.
