Huge spike in malicious emails

After what seemed to be a continuing decrease in the amount of spam email and malicious spam email, M86 is reporting now a huge spike in the amount of malicious spam email since the beginning of August. The belief is that with the arrest of cyber-criminals and the take down of major botnets, the cyber-criminals are back in force trying to re-establish their bot networks.

This increase in malicious spam is a good reminder to IT administrators to keep vigilant with their security, whether it's email or web based security, as many emails rely on tricking users into filling out linked web pages or downloading malicious software from linked pages. Security should especially be of concern for your web proxy if you're only using URL database filtering today. In addition to that layer of security every web proxy should also do real time scanning of downloaded content using an anti-malware or anti-virus engine.