Security incidents and attacks were up 84 per cent over the first three months of this year.

According to security tool firm ISS' quarterly Internet Risk Impact Summary Report (IRIS) security attacks nearly doubled from Q4 2002 to Q1 2003.

This increase was coupled with a ten-fold jump in overall security events (automatic probes, scans for vulnerabilities etc.) in the first three months of 2003 compared to the last quarter of 2002.

Viral activity is the main reason behind this increase, according to ISS. It tracked 752 new worms and hybrid threats in the first quarter of 2003, compared to 101 in the fourth quarter of 2002.

Much of the increase in malicious activity can be attributed to the emergence of the prolific SQL Slammer worm in January. On its own this accounted for a huge upswing in activity - especially compared to a noticeably quiet period at the end of last year.

Although viral activity was up ISS recorded a drop in new vulnerabilities from 644 in Q4 2002 to 606 in Q1 2003.

Internet Security Systems' IRIS provides a quarterly snap-shot of cyber-attack trends based on statistics from its large network of number of monitored security devices, actual attacks detected and researched vulnerabilities.

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