IMPact Report for Second Quarter 2006 (April - June)

Summary Analysis of IM, Chat and P2P Threats in Q2 2006

Key Findings

• Quarterly incidents exhibit marked seasonality. In general, the last three quarters show a decline in total incidents; however, historically each "down" quarter has been followed by an upswing, which we expect to follow later this year.
• A comparison of Q1 and Q2 2006 with the prior year quarters shows that the overall incident count is slightly up, again suggesting periodic swings rather than a definitive trend downward
• Year-to-date P2P incidents have already surpassed the total for 2005
• Multi-channel attacks have declined somewhat from Q1 2006 to Q2 2006. As a percentage of all attacks, however, mutli-channel approaches are still growing strongly. They currently constitute 47% of all attacks, down somewhat from the prior quarter, but still strong enough to be part of an historically strong upward trend.

Source Data

• The data used in this analysis are derived from server logfiles maintained by FaceTime Security Labs, the threat research arm of FaceTime Communications
• Each individual incident represents a detection of a security issue on one day

Monthly incidents are showing seasonal variation and are currently in decline. There appears to be a month-to-month cyclical pattern, suggesting an upswing may be seen later this summer.

Quarterly incidents exhibit marked seasonality. In general, the last three quarters show a decline in total incidents; however, historically each "down" quarter has been followed by an upswing, which we expect to follow later this year.

A comparison of Q1 and Q2 2006 with the prior year quarters shows that the overall count is slightly up, again suggesting periodic swings rather than a definitive trend downward

P2P attacks appear to be declining declining on a quarterly basis. However, the first six months of 2006 have produced more attacks of this type than occurred during the entire previous year.

Multi-channel attacks have declined somewhat from Q1 2006 to Q2 2006. As a percentage of all attacks, however, multi-channel approaches are still growing strongly. They currently constitute 47% of all attacks, down somewhat from the prior quarter, but still strong enough to be part of an historically strong upward trend.

FaceTime Communications is the leading provider of security solutions for the management and control of greynet applications such as adware/spyware, instant messaging, webmail, peer-to-peer file sharing, web conferencing and VoIP. FaceTime is ranked #1 by SC Magazine for IM Security, and has been rated #1 by IDC for two consecutive years. FaceTime solutions are used by almost two million people in over 700 organizations, among them eight of the ten largest U.S. financial institutions. FaceTime supports all leading public and private IM network providers, professional community networks, P2P networks including Skype, and WebEx web conferencing.

Read the 2006 Q1 IMPact Report

Read the 2005 IMPact Report