Jun 3, 2005 : Spam Jumps in May, Says Postini

📅 June 3, 2005 - Email security and management provider Postini (postini.com) announced on Thursday the number of virus-infected email messages in May increased by 381 percent from the previous month. Postini's managed email security service blocked 183,968,287 virus-ridden emails from reaching its customers in May, most of which contained the Sober worm (78 percent).


Sober worm traffic reached unprecedented levels from May 2 to 5, with emails containing the Sober virus accounted for 14 percent of total emails - a full percentage higher than that of legitimate emails.

Postini says it also prevented its customers from falling victim to more than 33 million directory harvest attacks, or an average of 243 per customer every day. This is a 30 percent increase compared to April's average of 191 DHAs against corporate email per day.

"Sober worm traffic in May was staggering, representing a higher percentage of email messages than legitimate emails for a period of four days," says Andrew Lochart, senior director of marketing at Postini. "New viruses and new variants of existing viruses constantly threaten enterprise networks, increasing the need for advanced managed service capabilities to protect the corporate email environment."