Microscope reports that a recent IDC survey reminds companies hoping to use pirated software in their businesses of one thing: the short-term cost savings don’t begin to compare to the long-term losses.
Globally firms have lost $144 billion dollars from buying illegal software thanks to nasty surprises like viruses and malware.
Although at an enterprise and mid-market level the number of firms using illegal software had dropped the problem had grown at a small firm level and the factors that are encouraging people to cut corners – a poor economy and a head in the sand attitude over BYOD – continued to dominate the landscape.
A bad economy also makes the time-consuming, expensive process of cleaning up infected computers even more of a burden for small businesses.
Companies now trend toward downloading products off of the Internet instead of using computer fairs or ordering a physical copy, but that doesn’t mean the file doesn’t have dangerous surprises in store.
For those firms that downloaded software from the web the infection rates were very high and most had been subsequent victims of identity fraud, having their credit card details stolen and had seen amounts of money mysteriously leaving their accounts.
The lesson is clear: though using pirated software may seem like a cheap alternative, the viruses, malware, and identity theft that follow far outweigh these temporary savings.
Tracy Carlin is a Communications and Public Policy Intern at SIIA. She is also a first year graduate student at Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology program where she focuses on intersections in education, video games and gender.
The Education Division of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) announces that Dr. Karen Billings, VP for the Education Division at SIIA, was inducted into the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) Hall of Fame. The induction was held during a ceremony at the McGraw Hill Conference Center in New York on Nov. 29.