Of that $2.6 billion, around $1.1 billion was spent in cleaning
up infected computer systems and returning them to normal service,
as well as inspecting over 8 million servers to determine the need
for patches.
The remaining $1.5 billion was lost through the negative impact
which Code Red produced on the productivity levels of system users,
support staff, helpdesk staff, and IT staff, as well as the
negative impact on customers.
The company estimates that computer viruses have this year cost
worldwide economies around $10.7 billion so far. This compares to a
figure of $17.1 billion in 2000 and $12.1 billion in 1999. Economic
impact was measured in this case by calculating the costs of
cleaning viruses from servers, networks, and clients’ systems,
restoring lost or damaged files, and the lost worker productivity
through downtime etc.
The virus which caused the single biggest economic impact,
according to Computer Economics, was the Love Bug, which struck
systems in May 2000. The estimated total cost of over 50 variants
of the virus was $8.7 billion.
