Commentary

Lots of Phish in the Sea

New information in the ocean of data on phishing indicates that the number of e-mail attacks has doubled in the past two years.

The results of a recent survey by research firm Gartner, Inc., show about 109 million U.S. adults received phishing e-mail, up from 57 million in 2004, while financial losses rose to $2.8 billion.

Although fewer adults believe they’ve lost money to phishing, the average loss per victim increased nearly fivefold between 2005 and 2006. And cyber-thieves appear to be going after higher-income targets.

“Anti-phishing and brand-protection services are not widespread or effective enough,” says analyst Avivah Litan, a vice president at Gartner. “Although demand for anti-phishing and brand protection services will grow 30 percent to 50 percent a year in the next few years, there are no simple solutions.”

Countermeasures, such as phishing detection, filtering, and takedown services are used mostly by large banks, ISPs, and other service providers, says Litan. However, cyber-thieves are moving from impersonating banks and concentrating their attacks more on other brands, such as PayPal and eBay, she adds. 

The good news is that back-end fraud detection and the use of more robust consumer authentication systems appear to be slowing the rate at which cyber-criminals can raid consumer accounts, the Gartner report shows.

Next story loading loading..