At one time, it was said the sun never set on the British Empire. The same can be said for virus and worm activity. New mass mailers don't care if it's 3 a.m. in Manhattan. Keeping track of malicious code is a 24/7 job.

Yet it's easy to take antivirus signature files for granted. In many cases, administrators don't even have to download and load them because automatic updates do the heavy lifting. But there are thinking and breathing people who have to create each and every one of them.

One of those people is Jamz Yaneza, senior antivirus consultant for Trend Micro Inc.'s TrendLabs.

Yaneza and his fellow researchers analyze and describe the latest malicious code to hit the Internet. But they don't study malware for the sake of knowledge; they bust their butts to get information out to Trend Micro's end users as fast and accurately as possible. Having four shifts of researchers ensures there are people available to analyze a sample no matter what time it comes in.

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