Government and business should work together to improve user knowledge in order to limit the spread of computer viruses, according to Stuart Okin, Microsoft's UK head of security.

Okin claimed that viruses such as MyDoom did not exploit flaws in software but spread because people were tricked into opening attachments by social engineering.

MyDoom harvests email addresses from PCs running Windows. There are eight variants currently in the wild.

"Governments and the private sector need to work together on this. Government has the authority to run a large-scale computer health campaign," Okin told vnunet.com.

"The private sector has the resources and knowledge to contribute to such a scheme."

Okin pointed to the co-operation between British IT firms and Leeds University to produce a computer security degree module.

The first data from the Department of Trade and Industry's British Information Security Breaches Survey has shown that better user education would help to halt the spread of viruses.

Chris Potter, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is overseeing the survey, said: "Smaller companies tended to get hit harder by these attachment viruses.

"Smaller firms are less likely to have the resources to educate employees in safe computer use. Larger firms are also more likely to have firewalls in place to block malicious software at the gateway."