The enterprise threat landscape has dramatically changed with the proliferation of a new generation of content security threats. Today’s cyber attacks harvest sensitive corporate data and expose companies to the risk of losing revenue, employee productivity, customer relationships, and market reputation. As the headlines prove, targeted threats are hitting companies faster and in larger quantities than ever before.

With this new generation of attacks, the focus has shifted from notoriety and publicity to profiting from threats that steal data and resources. Profit-driven cybercriminals lurk behind most web threats, creating a new generation of spam and malware based on a powerful underground economy. Enterprises are direct targets for cybercriminals, seeking to profit from the stolen data or resources of enterprises. Cybercriminals have also become more sophisticated, delivering faster more insidious attacks. In addition, the volume of threats has dramatically increased. Spam now comprises up to 95 percent of all email and, according to AVTest GmbH, security vendors collected 1,738 unique threat samples in all of 1988, which grew to 177,615 samples in 1998 and then to over 5 million by 2007.