The newest report on malware propagation has been published by McAfee Labs, it includes a detailed analysis of the state of security threats for the last quarter.
The Latest Malware Statistics and Analysis from McAfee Labs Has Been Published
Researchers from McAfee Labs published their latest report that showcases the current state of malware threats. It is made up of three separate studies along with a detailed analysis. The data shows that new malware samples in the second quarter of 2016 are more than 40 million, this makes it the second highest figure ever recorded. The total number of samples that Mcafee has contained is over 600 million variants. The new mobile malware samples are just fewer than 2 million – the highest ever quarterly number. The total number of this malware are around 11 million samples.
The security experts note that the ransomware threats continue to increase. The Q2 samples number around 1.3 million individual variants when the current total number is accounted to be around 7.25 million. This is an average increase of 128% on an annual basis.
One of the interesting discoveries that the researchers have noticed is that macro malware is starting to appear once again. There is an increase of these types of threats with a 39% ratio.
The only types of malware that are loosing popularity are the ones for the Mac OS X operating system. Web threats continue to decline. However the global spam volumes continue to increase, a trend that has continued over the last three quarters.
The document also contains information about the security defenses among businesses and consumers. The research team indicates that the retail and financial sectors have the best countermeasures against data loss, a fact attributed to the frequency of attacks targeted against them. The least prepared sectors are the healthcare and manufacturing industries.
Right now one of the biggest threats remains ransomware campaigns against medical facilities and the healthcare industry in general. Hospitals are a major concern as they have show weak data security measures, complex environments and a strong dependency on information access. A successful attack can literally cost human lives as well as incur financial damage to the institutions.
For more detailed information you can access the full report from this link.
