Kaspersky Lab is Detecting 325,000 New Malicious Files Every Day

Woburn, MA – December 3, 2014 - Every day in 2014, the Kaspersky Lab Anti-Malware Research team processes 325,000 new malicious files. That is up 10,000 a day compared with last year - and 125,000 a day more than in 2012.

Every day more than 1.6 million different files are processed through Kaspersky Lab’s Anti-Malware Research team. Almost 20 percent of these, that is to say one in five, is considered dangerous. There has been only a 3.17 percent increase in the numbers of malicious files detected this year compared with the 2013 figure. The previous 12-month period, from 2012-2013, saw a growth of more than 50 percent as the Anti-Malware Research team’s workload went from 200,000 to 315,000 malicious files per day. According to Kaspersky Lab experts, this sharp reduction in the growth rate reflects the significant change in tactics that malicious users are now deploying to infect PCs.

“We are now observing a very interesting trend in the malicious landscape. More and more often criminals use spear-phishing emails to target a very specific group. Previously this technique was almost exclusively used by advanced threat operators but now spear-phishing has been commercialized for use by less skillful cybercriminals. This allows them to perform smaller and less noticeable attacks. This makes their attacks less suspicious. However our security solutions consistently detect these types of attacks so our customers are protected,” said Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky, head of the Anti-Malware Research team at Kaspersky Lab.

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About Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky Lab is the world’s largest privately held vendor of endpoint protection solutions. The company is ranked among the world’s top four vendors of security solutions for endpoint users*. Throughout its more than 17-year history Kaspersky Lab has remained an innovator in IT security and provides effective digital security solutions for large enterprises, SMBs and consumers. Kaspersky Lab, with its holding company registered in the United Kingdom, currently operates in almost 200 countries and territories across the globe, providing protection for over 300 million users worldwide. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com.

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Media Contact
Sarah Bergeron
781.503.2615
sarah.bergeron@kaspersky.com

* The company was rated fourth in the IDC rating Worldwide Endpoint Security Revenue by Vendor, 2013. The rating was published in the IDC report "Worldwide Endpoint Security 2014–2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares (IDC #250210, August 2014). The report ranked software vendors according to earnings from sales of endpoint security solutions in 2013.