Is your Company’s Antivirus and Firewall Updated? 92% of All E-Mail is Spam

That’s right - only 8% of all email is legitimate, according to Symantec’s latest study of spam and phishing trends. As of July 2010, the spam rate is 92%, a 3% increase over 2009, as reported by InformationWeek.

The Symantec report has also uncovered a new phishing attack that looks like a legitimate e-commerce website with a “live chat” that, through a bogus chat session, tries to get your login and password for the legitimate site.

Phishing overall is a different story. The good news is spam containing phishing is down 5% over July 2009.  In addition, the number of unique phishing websites (created by automatic attack toolkits) was down by 60% from June 2010 to July 2010.  However, during the same period the number of unique URLS used in phishing attacks increase by 10% and non-English phishing sites increased by 15%.

And spammers continue to use hot topics to lure in their victims. In 2009, the leading spam subject lines contained Barack Obama or Michael Jackson. In June 2010 it was the World Cup; in July 2010 it switched to Claims for the BP Oil Fund.

If your business is not keeping its antivirus and firewall updated, you may already be at risk for an attack to your network.

If you’re not sure when your antivirus or firewall was last updated, contact us for a Vulnerability Assessment or call 800.325.9299.