Over the last two months, ScanSafe has recorded a 200% increase in the number of roaming and home workers, and has said it believes the spike is “the result of the growing threat of swine flu”.

“Our global infrastructure is scanning traffic for users outside the corporate network and has detected a significant global upturn in the number of roaming and home workers over the last eight weeks, especially in the UK and US”, said Spencer Parker, director of product management at ScanSafe.

“Many companies are beginning to implement a disaster recovery plan as swine flu continues its march across the globe. Part of this plan is preparing for the obvious increase in the number of employees that will be working from home. In normal times around five percent of the internet traffic we secure comes from mobile or home workers, this is now up to 15%.”

ScanSafe advices employers to take precautions as the swine flu causes more remote working, such as making sure they have the right technology to enforce acceptable internet usage and to block malware for remote workers, make sure operating systems and browsers are safe and up to date, educate its staff on best practice for information security, and to update desktop agents.

Parker also predicts it will not be long until those with dishonourable intent will exploit the swine flu fear: “…it won’t be long before sophisticated cyber criminals turn their attention to infecting websites designed to inform and advise the public on swine flu due [to] the huge increase in traffic they are receiving.”

ScanSafe has previously released research showing that roaming workers are 8.5 times more likely to visit illegal file sharing sites that those working in the office, and 2.5 times more likely to visit pornography sites – putting employers at risk of legal liability and malware exposure.