The rise of malware, viruses and Trojans can be linked to a major trend, it has been said.

Luis Corrons, the technical director at Panda Security, said that a number of events and holidays are dominating the computers of people across the world, in turn bringing a torrent of related viruses with them and thus underlining the strategic importance of disaster recovery.

He said that the biggest headlines of this year, including the death of Michael Jackson and the rise of swine flu, have been remarkably big for malicious code-creators targeting residential users and small businesses in IT alike, though mainstaple holiday viruses during the likes of Valentine's Day remain.

Mr Corrons added that the main issue is that links are hard to distinguish from safe websites.

"Unlike other attacks, such as scams sent via email, the user won't be able to recognise that the link is malicious; that's why the cybercriminals are launching these kinds of attacks," he concluded.

Recent data collected by SunbeltLabs discovered that three of the biggest virus threats around Halloween 2008 remained very much active 12 months later.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.