1- IntroductionIn order to formulate well-grounded anti-virus policies and measures, it is essential for us to understand at least two things. First, how likely is a given user or group of users to experience a computer virus today or at some point in the future? Second, what are the likely costs and other consequences of infection? In this paper, we focus on the first of these questions, separating it clearly into several components. Then, we discuss how one can measure these various aspects of the computer virus problem, both in the world as a whole and in a particular environment. We provide answers to some of these questions by presenting results that we have obtained by monitoring a large population of computer users over a period of several years. Finally, we compare our results with those of the 1991 Dataquest survey, using the opportunity to illustrate some pitfalls of data collection and interpretation that one should strive to avoid.
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