Web and email security vendor Marshal8e6 has bolstered its anti-malware capabilities with the acquisition of behaviour-based detection firm Avinti for an undisclosed sum.

Avinti's Observation Engine scans emails for web-based malware in attachments or malicious links, protecting against zero-day threats and increasingly common blended threats.

The latest Marshal8e6 threat report released in January found that less than one per cent of spam contained malicious attachments, whereas over 42 per cent contained blended threats, which use active malware or embedded URL links to malicious sites.

"The current technologies we have will not necessarily do as good a job tomorrow as they do today," said Marshal8e6 director of technical strategy Bradley Anstis.

"This behavioural analysis technology is a way of bolstering our support for blended threats, because malware infections have shifted from the email to the web gateway."

However, Marshal8e6 plans to use the technology in a "completely different way" to the on-premise appliance solution produced by Avinti.

"We will build a cloud-based service which will enable customers to submit suspicious links and attachments for observation," said Anstis. "This is the first use of behavioural analysis, but we have lots of other ideas."