Fortinet October 2008 Threatscape Report Shows Spam Levels Declining, Other Threats Increasing

<p>Fortinet® - the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions – today announced the results of a comprehensive analysis of worldwide IT threats for October 2008.</p>
<p>October 2008 saw very high levels of malware activity, with serious threats specifically targeting Japan and the US. Spam was significantly down as percentage of total email for the month, while malware exploits were on the rise and very aggressive. Pornography made up the highest category of Web threat based sites.</p>
<p>The Fortinet FortiGuard® Global Security Research team compiled the following statistics and trends for October based on data collected from FortiGate® network security appliances and intelligence systems in production worldwide:</p>
<p>• Exploits/Intrusion – Of the 18 active exploits, 14 were considered in the high- or critical-risk categories;</p>
<p>• Malware – Rogue security applications (AKA “scareware”) remained the top malware category for the month, with overall volume continuing the steep climb observed from April (10 million) to September (30 million); Japan (38.6%), the U.S. (32.9%) and China (25.1%) were the top three regional recipients of malware volume this month;</p>
<p>• Spam – October showed a precipitous and uncharacteristic decline in the percentage of email tagged as spam, with the period October 8 thru 20 showing a 10-percent drop;</p>
<p>• Web traffic – Pornography topped the list of Web threat sites that were blocked, followed by malware, spyware and phishing sites.</p>
<p>“The digital underground is such a complex and evolving landscape that we felt customers and others relying on our research would benefit from gaining deeper knowledge and analysis,” said Derek Manky, security researcher for Fortinet. “With this inaugural edition of the ‘Threatscape’ report, our goal is to both broaden and deepen the threat content and offer customers, consumers, researchers and others more information to better mitigate their own online risks.”</p>
<p>Customers who use Fortinet’s FortiGuard Subscription Services should already be protected against the threats outlined in this report.</p>
<p>To read the full October Threatscape report which includes the top threat rankings in each category, please visit: http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/reports/roundup_oct_2008.html.</p>
<p>For ongoing threat research, bookmark the FortiGuard Center (http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/) or add it to your RSS feed by going to http://www.fortinet.com/FortiGuardCenter/rss/index.html. To learn more about FortiGuard Subscription Services, visit http://www.fortinet.com/products/fortiguard.html.</p>
<p>FortiGuard Subscription Services offer broad security solutions including antivirus, intrusion prevention, Web content filtering and anti-spam capabilities. These services help enable protection against threats on both application and network layers. FortiGuard Services are updated by the FortiGuard Global Security Research Team, which enables Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence and zero-day protection from new and emerging threats. For products with a subscription to FortiGuard, these updates are delivered to all FortiGate®, FortiMail™ and FortiClient™ products.</p>
<p>About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)</p>
<p>Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated unified threat management, or UTM, security systems, which are used by enterprises and service providers to increase their security while reducing total operating costs. Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to integrate multiple levels of security protection--including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and anti-spam -- designed to help customers protect against network and content level threats. Leveraging a custom ASIC and unified interface, Fortinet solutions offer advanced security functionality that scales from remote office to chassis-based solutions with integrated management and reporting. Fortinet solutions have won multiple awards around the world and are the only security products that are certified in six programs by ICSA Labs: Firewall, Antivirus, IPSec VPN, SSL VPN, Network IPS, and Anti-spam. Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.</p>
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<p>Copyright © 2008 Fortinet, Inc. All rights reserved. The symbols ® and ™ denote respectively federally registered trademarks and unregistered trademarks of Fortinet, Inc., its subsidiaries and affiliates, including, but not limited to, the following trademarks: Fortinet, FortiGate, FortiGuard, FortiManager, FortiMail, FortiClient, FortiCare, FortiAnalyzer, FortiReporter, FortiOS, FortiASIC, FortiWiFi, FortiSwitch, FortiVoIP, FortiBIOS, FortiLog, FortiResponse, FortiDB, APSecure, and ABACAS. Other trademarks belong to their respective owners.</p>
<p>Media Contact:
Sebastian Rice,
02 9959 1991,
seb@silverspan.com,
www.silverspan.com.</p>

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