Firms are facing an increasing risk from converged attacks, as hackers look to new ways to bypass traditional security measures, according to new reports released today.

One of the most common methods of attack is to send users spam emails that contain links to legitimate websites that have been infected with malicious code, according to security vendor Marshal's mid-year Trace Threat report.

"Spammers are going back to straightforward spam – not image spam or attachments," explained vice president of products Bradley Anstis. "The cyber criminals seem to have more success with social engineering and blended attacks. "

Security vendor Secure Computing has also released its Q2 Threat Report for 2008, which found that spam volumes have risen by 280 per cent since the same time last year.

"The threats challenging us today are becoming a blended variety that challenge both email and web security," the report concluded. "Without integrated and correlated protection between the two, the ability to stay ahead of these threats will become increasingly difficult."

Also today, messaging security firm Cloudmark warned its customers in the service provider space to revisit their security strategies in order to protect against threats that combine spam, phishing and malware and distribute across multiple media.

"The threats are being seen in social networks, mobile messaging and email," said Jamie de Guerre, Cloudmark's chief technology officer. "Organisations need to look at security solutions that aren't designed to work in silos."