A monthly security report by IT security company
Symantec suggests global spam is now at a 12-year low. The company, which was established in 1982, has headquarters in Mountain View, California, USA. It is globally recognized for its internet protection products which include the Norton Antivirus suite, Enterprise Vault, and the Veritas suite. The report suggests that the spam rate for the June was 49.7%, a reduction of .6% on the previous month. The report also suggests a reduction in the number of phishing attacks and attacks from email-based malware over the same period.
According to Ben Nahorney, the company’s Cyber Security Threat Analyst, the number of Crypto-ransomware attacks - where malicious software locks a computer and requires the owner to pay money to unlock it – were also up in June. According to the company’s website the most attacks since December 2014 took place last month. The reports also suggests that “targeted attacks” against the manufacturing industry dropped from 41% to 22% in June, producing similar levels to that experienced the finance, insurance and real estate sectors.
“There is good news this month on the email-based front of the threat landscape,” suggested the company’s website. “According to our metrics, the overall spam rate has dropped to 49.7 percent. This is the first time this rate has fallen below 50 percent of email for over a decade. The last time Symantec recorded a similar spam rate was clear back in September of 2003,” suggested the report. “Although news on an overall decline in the amount of spam is encouraging, the report also suggests that June saw the creation of 57.6 million new malware variants – a significant increase over May. In addition, there has been an increase in Ransomware attacks.”
What do you think? Is spam becoming less troublesome? Let us know your thoughts. Add your comments below.
