A new report has revealed that the level of spam declined to below 50% of the total volume of email for the first time in more than a decade.
Symantec’s Intelligence Report for June 2015 said the overall email spam rate dropped to 49.7%. The last time the security firm recorded a similar spam rate was in September 2003.
The overall email spam rate was 52.1% in April and 51.5% in May. Manufacturing sector was the prime target with majority number of attacks in June, followed by finance, insurance and real estate industries.
Symantec cybersecurity threat analyst Ben Nahorney said: "This increase in activity lends more evidence to the idea that, with the continued drops in email-based malicious activity, attackers are simply moving to other areas of the threat landscape."
The security firm attributed the decline to the increase in legal action against botnets, faster reaction times by network providers, enhanced blocking, and better filtering.
Symantec said even though spam is down, malware and ransomware are on the rise. The company detected more than 477,000 ransomware attacks in June.
It was the second month in a row ransomware attacks have increased since they reached a 12-month low in April.
Crypto-ransomware has also increased last month, reaching their highest levels since December last year.
