• by Ray Schultz , August 28, 2018

One out of every 50 emails contains a suspicious link, according to Mimecast’s latest Email Security Risk Assessment, a study released on Tuesday.

The study reflects examined 142 million emails that went through such security systems as Microsoft Office 365, Proofpoint and Symantec.

Mimecast detected 19 million suspicious emails that were delivered to inboxes and not detected by incumbent security systems. Of these, 7 million were rejected and 11.3 million were quarantined. 

Of the total, 12.9 million — or roughly 67.8% — went through Microsoft 365. Another 2.9 million, or roughly 15.%, went through Proofpoint.

Mimecast determined that over 123 million of the emails were safe.

However, the firm identified 13,100 dangerous types that were missed by the incumbent providers, along with over 15,600 malware attachments.

Overall, it identified 203,000 malicious links within 10,072,682 emails that passed through these security systems. 

It estimated that if ten seconds are used dealing with the average spam, the total time wasted was 53,019 hours.

The study was conducted over a period of 1,207 days.