Dive Brief:

• The amount of spam affecting businesses is on the decline, according to Symantec's newly released “Intelligence Report June 2015.”

• The overall spam rate dropped to 49.7% in June — its lowest level in 12 years

• Though email-based attacks are down, attackers are moving to other modalities, as malware incidents are on the rise. In total, 57.6 million new malware variants appeared in June, up from 44.5 million in May and just 29.2 million in April. One in 319 emails contained malware, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

“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,” the report said.

Manufacturing is the largest sector being attacked, but Symantec said all business sectors are affected, just at various levels.

CIOs and other IT personnel have the vital task of encouraging safe email practicies to make sure both spam and malware attacks are unsuccessful.