Sunnyvale, Calif. – January 16, 2008 – Proofpoint, Inc., the leading provider of unified email security and data loss prevention solutions, today reported spam trends for data collected during the month of December 2007, finding that, on average, spam represents more than 90% of the total email volume received by large enterprises. While total enterprise spam volumes rose in December, spammers continued to vary their spam distribution tactics, relying more on traditional text-based spam than in recent months. After surging in November, the use of image-based spam, PDF spam and Microsoft Word document spam decreased during the month.

The Proofpoint Spam Index™ was at 91.33% in December, indicating that during the month more than 9 out of 10 email messages delivered to large enterprises were spam. The December index rose over November’s index of 88.17%.

“As we’ve seen in past years, the peak of the holiday season is also peak season for spam, so it’s not surprising to see our December spam index hit its highest point since September 2007,” said Rami Habal, director of product marketing for Proofpoint. “We continue to see spammers rapidly changing their mix of spam types and it was interesting to see the use of attachment-based spam drop significantly after surging in November.”

Attachment-based Spam Takes a Holiday at the End of 2007

As Proofpoint has observed throughout the last part of 2007, spammers continued to change their spam distribution tactics in order to maximize delivery rates for their messages. During the previous month, attachment-based spam in most formats was up significantly, but this trend did not continue during December:

• Image-based spam continued to represent a significant part of total spam volume. After bursting to nearly 10% of total spam volume in November, image-based spam fell slightly to 9.26% of all spam during the month of December.
• The use of Microsoft Word document spam (.doc attachments) declined by 19.83% from November levels to 3.80% of total spam volume. Microsoft Word document spam in .rtf format also declined during December to represent 0.35% (a 43.55% decrease from November levels).
• PDF spam, which rose significantly in November did not continue to grow and continued to be a very small percentage of total spam volume. PDF spam volumes fell by 46.83% to just 0.35% of total spam volume.
• MP3 spam—where the spammer’s message is attached as an MP3 format audio file—continued its decline since debuting in October. During December, MP3 spam volumes fell by 75.00%, to just 0.01% of total spam volume.

New Zero-Hour Virus Activity Detected in December

One of the earliest server-side polymorphic malwares, known as Stration/Warezov, reappeared suddenly for several intense outbreak waves in November and December. Stration/Warezov is difficult for traditional signature- and heuristic-based anti-virus solutions to detect, because of its ability to continually modify characteristics both in its code and in the email that carries the malware.

It tends to attack in short, intense waves to maximize damage in the first few hours before anti-virus signature updates can be released. To quickly defend against outbreaks of morphing malware, Proofpoint offers the Proofpoint Zero-Hour Anti-Virus module. To learn more about Proofpoint Zero-Hour Anti-Virus and view recent “zero day” malware outbreaks intercepted by Proofpoint, please visit http://www.proofpoint.com/zhav.

Learn More about Proofpoint’s Industry Leading Email Security and Data Loss Prevention Solutions

Proofpoint’s anti-spam solution has continued to perform with extremely high effectiveness against the latest “traditional” and image-based spam during the latest spam outbreaks—averaging 99.91% effectiveness during the month of December, as measured against Proofpoint’s global network of spam honeypots.

To learn more about Proofpoint’s email security and data loss prevention solutions, sign up to attend an upcoming live demonstration. To register, please visit:

http://www.proofpoint.com/livedemo

About the Proofpoint Spam Index

The Proofpoint Spam Index is a measure of the average amount of spam hitting the typical enterprise, university or government agency. The index is an average of actual spam volumes observed by Proofpoint systems deployed at a variety of customer sites, representing large organizations across a range of vertical industries including financial services, healthcare, higher education, manufacturing and business services. While spam volumes observed by individual organizations can vary widely, the Proofpoint Spam Index provides a useful baseline for monitoring general rises or declines in spam activity from month to month.

About Proofpoint, Inc.

Proofpoint provides unified email security and data loss prevention solutions for enterprises, universities, government organizations and ISPs to defend against inbound threats such as spam and viruses, prevent leaks of confidential and private information across all protocols, and encrypt sensitive emails. Proofpoint’s products are controlled by a single management and policy console and are powered by Proofpoint MLX™ technology, an advanced machine learning system developed by Proofpoint scientists and engineers. Proofpoint provides the most scalable and flexible deployment model including: hardware appliance, virtual appliance, hosted services and software. For more information, please visit http://www.proofpoint.com.

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Proofpoint, Proofpoint MLX and Proofpoint Spam Index are trademarks or registered trademarks of Proofpoint, Inc. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.