Yummy stats! These are from the anti-spam appliance in front of Exchange, for the last 24 hours.
And now, definitions:
Processed: The number of messages processed. This is unexploded, so that mail sent to 42 people still counts as just 1.
Spam: The number of Spam messages with a confidence of 90% or higher.
Suspected Spam: The number of Spam messages with a user defined confidence of (in this case) 70% or higher.
Attacks: An aggregate statistic, but in this case they're all Directory Harvest Attack messages. A directory-harvest-attack message is one of those messages sent to 20 people at a site with generated names, in an effort to see which addresses don't generate a bounce message.
Allowed/Blocked: We don't use this feature.
Viruses: Viruses that are not mass mailers.
Suspected Viruses: Heuristically detected viruses. Good for picking up permutations of common viri.
Worms: Viruses that are mass mailers.
Unscannable: Messages that are unscannable for whatever reason.
Like my boss, you may be looking at that 50% number and wonder what happened. It is commonly reported in the press that, "90% of all email is now spam," so where are the other 40% going? I looked into where the press were getting their numbers, and most of them get them from MessageLabs. They report their numbers on the Threat Watch. Today, the Spam rate is, "48.43%", so the 50% we're seeing is well within reason. Looking at their historical data the spam rate waxes and wanes on a day to day and week to week basis.
| Processed | Spam | Suspected Spam | Attacks | Blocked | Allowed | Viruses | Suspected Virus | Worms | Unscannable | |||||||||||||||||
| Summary |  | 168,802 | | 85,166 (50%) | | 544 (<> | | 4,837 (3%) | | 0 (0%) | | 0 (0%) | | 43 (<> | | 31 (<> | | 3,730 (2%) | | 1,772 (1%) |
And now, definitions:
Processed: The number of messages processed. This is unexploded, so that mail sent to 42 people still counts as just 1.
Spam: The number of Spam messages with a confidence of 90% or higher.
Suspected Spam: The number of Spam messages with a user defined confidence of (in this case) 70% or higher.
Attacks: An aggregate statistic, but in this case they're all Directory Harvest Attack messages. A directory-harvest-attack message is one of those messages sent to 20 people at a site with generated names, in an effort to see which addresses don't generate a bounce message.
Allowed/Blocked: We don't use this feature.
Viruses: Viruses that are not mass mailers.
Suspected Viruses: Heuristically detected viruses. Good for picking up permutations of common viri.
Worms: Viruses that are mass mailers.
Unscannable: Messages that are unscannable for whatever reason.
Like my boss, you may be looking at that 50% number and wonder what happened. It is commonly reported in the press that, "90% of all email is now spam," so where are the other 40% going? I looked into where the press were getting their numbers, and most of them get them from MessageLabs. They report their numbers on the Threat Watch. Today, the Spam rate is, "48.43%", so the 50% we're seeing is well within reason. Looking at their historical data the spam rate waxes and wanes on a day to day and week to week basis.