Emails have become the battleground for the first half of the year in terms of security. It is the number one infection vector that have ushered in 2016’s biggest threats so far—ransomware and business email compromise (BEC). Ransomware infections normally start via email. Based on our findings, 71% of the known ransomware families’ delivery method is through spam.

Looking at the threat trends so far, both ransomware and BEC have proved profitable across the world. This echoes our prediction that 2016 would be the Year of Online Extortion. Ransomware continues to threaten business-critical data and cost organization thousands of dollars in losses; BEC scams bank on social engineering lures that lead even companies’ top decision-makers to transfer huge sums of money—totaling to over US$3 billion in estimated losses.