Less than seven years ago a spy was:

‘a secret agent hired by a state to obtain information about its enemies or by a business to obtain industrial secrets from competitors'

Nowadays, anyone who uses a computer is prey to malicious software intended to intercept or take partial control of a computer's operation without the user's informed consent, subverting the computer's operation for the benefit of a third party - SPYWARE. The consequences of a moderate to severe spyware infection (privacy issues aside) generally include a substantial loss of system performance (over 50% for bad infections), and major stability issues – crashes and hangs. The only remedy for badly infected computers is a complete reinstallation of the operating system, which has a major impact on the manpower in support departments.

According to an October 2004 study by America Online and the National Cyber-Security Alliance , 80% of surveyed users' computers had some form of spyware, with an average of 93 spyware components per computer. 89% of surveyed users with spyware reported that they did not know of its presence, 95% reported that they had not given permission for it to be installed.

Xcomm offers Barracuda Spyware Firewall , an integrated anti-spyware gateway solution that blocks spyware from getting into your organisation..