Spam rate falls under 50 percent for first time since 2003

Phishing rates and email-based malware were also down this month. It's not all good news though as there were 57.6 million new malware variants created in June, up from 44.5 million pieces of malware created in May and 29.2 million in April. This increase in activity suggests that, with the continued drops in email-based malicious activity, attackers are simply moving to other areas of the threat landscape.

Ransomware attacks were up in June too, with over 477,000 detected during the month. While still below the levels seen at the end of 2014, this is the second month in a row that ransomware attacks have increased since they reached a 12-month low in April.