F-Secure, the Finnish Internet security vendor, has launched a world virus map. This online tool is for anyone interested in understanding the world computer virus situation at a glance.

The resource, developed for research purposes at F-Secures anti-virus labs, is now available to the general public in four languages English, French, German and Finnish. Visitors to the site (URL below) will see a full world map, and can then quickly and easily drill down for information about a particular continent or country.

Colour representations of infection levels from quiet to epidemic give the viewer an immediate overview of the situation in their chosen area. Related graphs and statistics give the broader context of the outbreak, based on timelines that range from the last hour to the last year, as well as a breakdown of the effects of viruses in question.

[Take a look - you will see a world with a slight case of measles. If you do go to the site please play with the controls for a while - there is more to it than immediately meets the eye and it is a quite useful tool in some contexts.

I found two errors in the GUI:

• When you select statistics for a particular virus and then change continent you can't refresh by clicking on the same virus again
  
• There is no 'whole world' option in the continent selector so you can't immediately revert to a world view.

I also think that the zoom level could automatically adapt to the continent chosen so as to present only that continent in the map window but on the other hand doing so could cause the user to miss out important information in other parts of the world but relevant to the threat picture. --Ed].

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
worldmap.f-secure.com/

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