Businesses considering endpoint security will surely be interested to learn that spam emails appear to be on the decline, with new research revealing that people are now being sent fewer junk messages than at any time in the last 12 years – driven in part by legal action having been taken against criminal networks.

Figures from security company Symantec have revealed that fewer than half of all emails that it scanned during the month of June turned out to be junk, although this drop in spam has been offset by an increase in the amount of malware people are now seeing, the BBC reports.

While spam emails were down in June, Symantec caught around 57.6 million pieces of malware, almost double what was seen in April. The company’s Ben Nahorney said in his report: “This increase in activity lends more evidence to the idea that, with the continued drops in email-based malicious activity, attackers are simply moving to other areas of the threat landscape.”

According to new research from Damballa and The Ponemon Institute, companies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia are now dealing with almost 10,000 malware alerts every week, although it’s thought that just 22 per cent of these are actually reliable. Furthermore, 3.5 per cent of these alerts are considered to be worth investigating further.

Such facts suggest that IT departments are finding it hard to manage their resources or perhaps lack the expertise necessary to either detect or block serious malware. As such, it could be worth companies enlisting the services of an online backup and disaster recovery company to help them manage their operations in this regard.