As one of the top cybercrime ploys impacting both consumers and businesses, phishing has grown in volume and sophistication over the past several years. The down economy is providing a breeding ground for new, socially-engineered attempts to defraud unsuspecting business people and consumers. With honest money-earning avenues less available, the cybercrime ecosystem is ready with off-the-shelf phishing kits.
It no longer takes a hacker to enable and commit fraud on the Internet — anyone with a motive can join in. The potential impact on a business can be great — whether an employee or its customers have been phished or the company Web site has been compromised. Organizations need to stay current on the latest methods employed by cyber criminals and proactively take steps to prevent this type of fraud.
This fraud alert highlights the current growth and trends in today’s phishing schemes, the potential impact on companies, and insight into how businesses can apply technology to protect themselves and their customers.
Phishing Knows No Limits
Phishing ~ luring unsuspecting users to provide sensitive information for identity or business theft ~ is a serious threat for both consumers and businesses. In the last decade since phishing arrived on the scene, this fraud method has been growing rapidly, with one estimate citing approximately 8 million daily phishing attempts worldwide.
Background
In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.
For detail information see attached Verisign Report!