A security firm found that January was a “record-breaking month” for malicious emails detected among its clients.
On Tuesday, AppRiver, an email messaging and web security solutions provider, released the findings of its Q1 Global Security Report, where 14 billion email messages were screened for malware between January and March. Among the messages, nearly 10.9 billion were spam, while another 490 million contained malware, the company noted.
During January, the firm noted a major influx in malware-laden emails, with one in every 10 emails being flagged as malicious at one point. AppRiver said that the "abundance in malicious traffic" marked an all-time high since 2008.
The report also found that the U.S. led the pack as the country of origin for spam. According to the report, 2.5 billion spam messages originated in the country.