McAfee threat catalog doubles in less than two years

The company said it officially released protection this week for the 200,000th threat in its intrusion prevention database. This milestone was reached in less than two years since the company recorded its 100,000th threat in September 2004.

"It's remarkable to note that it took 18 years for our database to reach 100,000 malicious threats and just under two years to double to 200,000," said Stuart McClure, senior vice president, global research and threats at McAfee.

The company is on track to record more than 60,000 new threats by the end of the year. McClure said that the surge in new threats is directly attributable to hackers who continually stay one step ahead of the security experts. According to McAfee, bots are the leading cause of this explosive growth.

"Although security awareness continues to improve, hackers and malicious code authors are releasing threats faster than ever before, with approximately 200 percent more malicious threats per day than two years ago," McClure said.