Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2026: Phishing: the world’s leading cyberattack method

390 billion emails are sent globally every day, with nearly half of them being spam. Of these spam emails, approximately 3 to 5 percent are phishing emails, which corresponds to up to 9 billion emails – every day. Obviously, many of these will succumb to a provider’s diligent email filters or security solutions and be deleted long before they can end up in a user’s inbox. But if we suppose that even just 1 percent of these emails arrives in the recipient’s inbox, that translates into 90 million phishing emails on a daily basis.

Microsoft registered 8.3 billion threats stemming from phishing emails just in the first quarter of 2026. The experts at AV-TEST also collect spam and phishing emails on a daily basis and evaluate them in real time on their AV-ATLAS platform. It does not list the overall number, but records the different types of samples over a 7-day period. For example, more than 60 percent of 10,000 spam emails recorded contain a dangerous link and 30 percent have a malicious attachment. The rest of the spam emails are just annoying ads. […]

The attached data can be used to create at-a-glance overviews or statistics of the test results, starting immediately (there is no embargo).

You are free to use the results as a basis for your own reviews, as long as a reference to "AV-TEST Institute" – with an active link to our website www.av-test.org – is given as source. Thank you!

Über die AV-TEST – SITS Deutschland GmbH

About the AV-TEST Institute

AV-TEST is an independent supplier of services in the fields of IT Security and Antivirus Research, focusing on the detection and analysis of the latest malicious software and its use in comprehensive comparative testing of security products.

Due to the timeliness of the testing data, malware can instantly be analyzed and categorized, trends within virus development can be detected early, and IT-security solutions can be tested and certified. The AV-TEST Institute’s results provide an exclusive basis of information helping vendors to optimize their products, special interest magazines to publish research data, and end users to make good product choices.

AV-TEST has operated out of Magdeburg (Germany) since 2004 and employs more than 30 team members, professionals with extensive practical experience. The AV-TEST laboratories include 500 client and server systems, where more than 3,500 terabyte of independently-collected test data, containing both malicious and harmless sample information, are stored and processed.

Firmenkontakt und Herausgeber der Meldung:

AV-TEST – SITS Deutschland GmbH
Klewitzstraße 7
39112 Magdeburg
Telefon: +49 391 6075460
https://www.av-test.org

Ansprechpartner:

Erik Heyland
E-Mail: presse@av-test.com

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