The problem with current malware metrics

When security companies say that there was an X number of infections from a particular type of malware in the past month or year, or that an Y number of variants of a piece of malware was detected, these numbers mean something to other researchers and to marketing departments, but very little to individual consumers.

In this podcast recorded at Virus Bulletin 2011, Trend Micro’s Global Director of Education David Perry talks about why the currently used malware measurements are not up to the task and about the need to stop sharing with the users statistics that are effectively useless to them.

And that raises the question of how should security professionals “translate” the malware metrics they find useful into information that will answer the two main questions that all users want the answers to: “What is it? Am I in danger from it?”

Listen to the podcast here.