There are 20 billion spam email messages received in the UK every day - that's 300 for every man, woman and child in the country.
According to IronPort Systems, which today published its 2008 Internet Security Trends Report, there are some 120 billion spam emails send per day worldwide, meaning that the UK receives one sixth of them.
IronPort also said that new malware attacks have become much more sophisticated, making them harder to counteract.
"Just when malware design seemed to have reached a plateau, new attack techniques have emerged, some so complex ? and obviously not the work of amateurs ? they could have only been designed by means of sophisticated research and development," said Jason Steer, European product manager for IronPort.
The problem, according to IronPort, is that the protection offered by security firms became so good, cybercriminals were forced to go to rethink their methods and come up with new attack vectors.
"For a time, security controls designed to manage malware were working. But, as a result of this success, the threats they protected against were forced to change. In 2007, many of these threats underwent significant adaptation. Malware went stealth, and the sophistication increased."
www.ironport.com
Topic: 98 per cent of all email is spam (Read 1273 times)