Virus Bulletin came up with some interesting historical facts. In 1989, when the very first Virus Bulletin rolled off the press (produced in a black-and-white, printed pamphlet style), there was only one subscriber and there were only 14 viruses known for the IBM PC. Five years on in 1994 there were over 3,000 viruses known to researchers, and here are the approximate numbers from there on out.
These numbers are an aggregate from several sources like AV-test, and antivirus vendors like Symantec, Sophos and Avast. As you can see this is exponential. New malware strains are created on an industrial scale at about 1,000,000 a week now. No wonder that traditional antivirus can't keep up anymore and that it's time to "do a 180" and use a whole new way to protect workstations...
1989 14
1994 3,000
2002 15,000
2003 28.000
2004 90,000
2005 103,000
2006 124,000
2007 711,000
2008 11,600,000
2009 30,000,000
2010 46,000,000
2011 63,000,000
2012 70,000,000
2013 80,000,000
2014 130,000,000 est
Here is the graph
Here is a link to a FULL SIZE graph over at our Amazon content delivery network.
