One of our goals here at the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) is to share the valuable data, insights and expertise we have with customers on a regular basis in an effort to help customers better understand the changes occurring in the threat landscape and improve their defenses accordingly.  We just released the fifth volume of our Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR). The SIR shares the conclusions drawn by our research team using data gathered from hundreds of millions of computers worldwide and some of the busiest services on the internet.

We have been listening to feedback from customers, partners and analysts regarding what they liked in past releases of the SIR and what they thought could be improved.  Based on that feedback we have made some big changes in this new volume of the SIR that I hope readers will like.  Please keep the feedback coming!  Some of the changes we made in the new SIR include:

• The report has a new look and feel to help make the findings in the SIR really relevant to what IT professionals see in the real world – Jimmy Kuo from the MMPC and Jeffrey Friedberg from the Trustworthy Computing team authored a detailed examination of the threat ecosystem (focusing on botnets) which explains how threats propagate across the internet, how users become infected and the resultant impact on privacy and identity theft.
• We include data and analysis on software vulnerability disclosures in Microsoft and third-party software; vulnerability exploit trends; brand new content on browser-based vulnerabilities; and updated information on the trends we see in malicious and potentially unwanted software.
• A 15-page Key Findings Summary is also available which provides a high-level summary of the full 150-page SIR. This Summary is available in the following languages -  Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, and Spanish.

Here are a couple of key findings from the report:

• Trojan downloaders and droppers remain the most prevalent threat we see worldwide, making up more than 30% of all malware removed:
  
  
  
  
• In general, infection rates tend to be lower in developed countries/regions as reported by the Malicious Software Removal Tool:
  
  
  
  
• The infection rates for newer operating systems, and later service pack combinations, is significantly better than that of their predecessors:
  
  

There is lots more data and analysis to be found in the SIR  - read more by downloading the SIR and the Key Findings Summary here.

Thanks,
Vinny Gullotto
General Manager, MMPC