A report by Microsoft’s security research team revealed that the complicated Danish language acts as a shield against virus attacks and makes it difficult for cyber criminals to penetrate the computer system. The data indicated that historically Nordic countries such as Denmark, Norway and Finland have typically some of the lowest computer virus infection rates in the world.
The research consisted of data from 600 million computer systems over six months. The data showed that four of the five locations in the Nordic region had the lowest infection rates with Denmark taking over Sweden’s place. All five locations had infection rates between 1.3 and 2.3 per 1000 scans compared to the worldwide average of 7.1.
"Denmark and Finland have small languages and this makes it difficult for the cyber criminals if the virus, for example, is being sent out via email in an attempt to convince users to open an attachment,” Tim Raines, head of Microsoft’s security department, told Politiken newspaper.
According to the research, Denmark had the fourth lowest levels of viruses, bested only by Finland, Japan and China. However, the researches cast some doubt on China's placing, saying that special Chinese viruses were not registered.
“For a while we thought that only Japan has low virus attacks in the statistics because it is difficult for foreign cyber criminals to learn the language. But we saw a huge difference in South Korea, despite its similarity with Japan's language. South Korea’s virus level was one of the highest in the world for years,” Raines told Politiken.
However, language alone cannot explain why a country is particularly secured or vulnerable against virus attacks, the researchers said. The Microsoft’s security research team came to the conclusion that a country's political and economic situation affects its level of exposure to virus attacks.
Full Microsoft Security Intelligence Report and Regional Threat Assessment Report.
