The research shows that although the amount of phishing e-mails has reduced, these assaults are increasingly targeting a wider range of industries aiming at higher profits. As banks and credit unions remain the targets of attackers, technology and energy industries along with the government are now facing surging number of attacks.

Cyveillance found that phishing attacks targeted 399 brands for the first time in the second half of 2009, almost double the number of brands targeted for the first time in the first half of 2009. Averaging more than 36,000 unique, confirmed attacks per month during the same period in 2009, phishing assaults seem to thrive in spite of advances made in consumer education and extra security employed by security departments within the attacked firms.

Chief Operating Officer of Cyveillance, Panos Anastassiadis, stated that online criminals are trying to develop more advanced and targeted attacks instead of using a far spreading blanket approach, for garnering huge profits, reported The New Internet on February 25, 2010.

He further claimed that cybercriminals own an increasing assortment of assault vectors that appear legitimate and evade security solutions. Companies should be more careful in safeguarding themselves and should not rely only on conventional security measures for keeping their confidential information and infrastructure safe.

Besides malware statistics and phishing, the report also contains results on the ability of key antivirus (AV) software to identify malware. When Cyveillance fed active assaults through 14 of the leading AV vendor products, they recognized that these solutions identify less than half of the malware discovered on the Internet, making users vulnerable to infection.

Moreover, Cyveillance fed malware through six of the leading AV vendor products to find how much time they would take to sense the threat. Cyveillance discovered that even after one week to adjust to a latest malware risk, anti-virus software averages touched a detection rate of only around 50%.