But seriously, according to Symantec CEO John Thompson (speaking at RSA 2008), in the second half of 2007, the USA was the top origin of cyber attacks!

He also mentioned that identity exposure was the fault of Government 60% of the time – no big surprise here – how many stories have we seen about some Government employee losing or having had stolen a laptop that contained hundreds of thousands of Social Security numbers.

Another interesting stat was that the U.S. has the most bot-infected computers in the world.  Again, no big surprise here, as the U.S. likely has the highest number of computers (in totality) of any country in the world.

Granted, some cynics may question the source of these statistics.  After all, they come from Symantec, maker of the famous Norton Anti-Virus products.

But lets get real, shall we?  I don’t think anyone would deny that identity theft is a serious issue in today’s world.  And I think were we to look at some of the Computers in our own families, we know the terrible shape these computers are in – many with no virus protection whatsoever, or with virus signatures so outdated, having the program almost doesn’t matter.

It’s a shame, given that many of the best anti-virus software is available for free.  At the top of my head is AVG Anti Virus – free version (Windows XP/Vista and Linux i286).