MessageLabs Announces Annual Report

NEW YORK and LONDON -- MessageLabs, the leading provider of messaging and web security services to businesses worldwide, today announced the launch of its MessageLabs Intelligence 2007 Security Report. The annual report highlights how 2007 has been a year of diversity due to the vast number of new tactics, techniques and trojans entering the security market during the last twelve months.

Spam retains the title of “dominant menace” with annual spam levels reaching 84.6 percent but rather than just playing the volume game, the spammers also introduced an additional ten percent of new and previously unknown spam attacks than in 2006. The notorious Storm botnet which appeared on the threat landscape early in 2007 is likely to take some credit for the increased innovation, especially through its distribution of 15 million emails with MP3 attachments, new to the market in October.

"2007 will be a memorable year for the security industry for many reasons. With consumers handing cyber criminals their personal details through social networking sites and the Storm botnet literally taking the market by storm, it has been an attention-grabbing twelve months,” said Mark Sunner, Chief Security Analyst, MessageLabs. “Although targeted attacks seem to be high on the threat agenda, the war between businesses and the bad guys significantly heightened in 2007 as new threats appeared from every angle and on every communications channel. If 2008 is as frenzied as this year, businesses need to prepare for battle and ensure they have their protection in place.”

MessageLabs Ltd.