The worries surrounding the global spread of swine flu has galvanised the efforts of fraudsters, showing a notable rise in spam relating to the topic.

A spokesperson for McAfee announced the increasing amount of viruses and Trojan codes which may be associated with fake online pharmacies peddling "cures", in turn emphasising the importance of having an online data backup system should problems arise due to the trend.

Around two per cent of global spam over the last few days has been attributed to this theme and it is expected to grow, though McAfee has emphasised that it is to address the issue with action as soon as it is able to locate sources.

It highlights the trend of spammers using current events to give their fraudulent activities a bigger audience, with Valentine's Day and Christmas also being flashpoints which cybercriminals have been known to exploit.

In recent news, Loic Le Meur, the chief executive officer of Seesmic, a producer of Twitter desktop clients, stated that a spam reporting system needs to be used on Twitter to cut down on the spam scene which is emerging on the website.

New research from Connect found that, on average, it takes businesses that use backup tapes take 11.6 hours to retrieve and restore files. Connect is now recommending that SMEs switch to online backup.