Is pirated software and malware costing you millions?

It's amazing when you think about it: trusting an unknown person who cracked the latest game or design program more than we trust our friends and neighbors.

After all, if someone you knew came to your house and offered you a cable system with all the channels, fully paid for — ”Just ignore that registration and phone number part, and don’t ever contact the cable company about it!” — what would you do? Likely, you would smile, thank them for the offer and decline.

But when we need software or another computer, many of us have no problem letting people we’ve never met — sometimes from countries we’ve never visited (and may have never heard of) — give us license keys, hardware deals and other great bargains. And we use these too-good-to-be-true tools to do work with extremely sensitive data.

Don’t believe me? In surveying 1,700 workers, tech officers, and government officials in 13 countries, along with 203 computers purchased from resellers and specialty stores, research group IDC and the National University of Singapore¹ found that the chance of malware being present in pirated software is about one in three. On a computer bought on the cheap, with pirated software present? 61 percent. And even if your network is in good shape, users who are able to download and install these programs onto company machines are potentially putting you at risk.

Malware cost businesses across the globe $491 billion in cash, downtime and other bottom-line hits in 2014, according to the study. When you take a look at the study’s data more closely, the message is clear: that copy of QuickBooks that wasn’t paid for today is likely going to cost you something down the road.

On Windows machines, a Control+Shift+Escape key combination brings up the Windows Task Manager. On a Mac, you’re tapping Command+Shift and typing out Activity Monitor. Both utilities show you everything that’s running on your system at the moment.

Some of it will be apparent, and named for apps you have running (Outlook, Internet Explorer, etc.). Others will be more obscure. Anything that’s using up a lot of memory and/or a decent amount of “CPU,” should be searched for to see if anyone has reported it as a virus/malware problem. If so, check with your IT administrator and consider using one of those useful backups we just mentioned — before you’re forced into a total system wipe.