Statistics from the BSA shows that the rate of unlicensed software installations in personal computers in Vietnam is 74 percent, a reduction of 4 percent compared to the last survey.
Since 2009, this rate has continuously decreased from 85 percent to 83 percent in 2010, to 81 percent during the period from 2011 to 2013, and to 78 percent and 74 percent in the years of 2015 and 2017 respectively.
This rate is greatly affected by the main IT trends in Vietnam. Accordingly, although the computer consumption in the country significantly falls, the software installations witness an opposite trend because of the number of computers sold the previous year. Therefore, the reduction in unlicensed software installations is mostly thanks to the open market in Vietnam and the stricter law observation as well as law propaganda.
Also, the number of small computer retailers shrinks while the quantity of reliable source of licensed software rises. One more noticeable reason is the security concern over illegal software installations, which makes many consumers as well as businesses opt for legal ones, at least regarding security applications.
According to Ms. Victoria Espinel, President cum General Director of BSA, international organizations have not taken advantage of economic and security benefits brought by well managed software. They, therefore, need such software asset management programs (SAM) to better evaluate current software existing on the Internet in order to greatly reduce the risk of grave cyber-attacks while contributing to the revenue increase.
According to BSA’s announcement, to reduce cyber-attacks and increase gross revenues, Vietnamese businesses need to verify the status of all their software installations in order to eliminate any possible unlicensed ones.
As stated by many chief information officers (CIO), the use of unlicensed software possesses various kinds of risks, which may significantly increase the overhead expense. Malware attached along with unlicensed software has already caused severe harm of nearly $359 billion per year to many businesses.
In order to avoid being hacked or having similar cyber-attacks from malware, businesses should always use legal software.
This is not only a factor to boost economic growth, but also to guarantee cyber security. When applying proper and practical solutions to strictly manage software, each enterprise can raise its profit by 11 percent.
