Banks Suggested Strategies to Safeguard Against Phishing Attacks

Aite Group, LLC identifies, in its new report, strategies that banks could implement to protect themselves from phishing attacks as well as maintain the credibility of their e-mails.

The report indicates, based on a survey of banks, 78% banks responded positively saying that they are concerned about phishing attacks, yet the industry for financial service lacks the use of even basic e-mail authentication measures.

Speaking sarcastically, Nick Holland, Senior Analyst, Aite Group, who has also penned the report, remarked that banks were not neglecting their e-mail system and anticipated its increasing use by customers during the approaching years, as reported by bobsguide on March 26, 2008.

In a different statement, Holland said that the increased accuracy of phishers' attacks reflected fraudsters' slide down on the hierarchy of financial institutions to target more on the smaller organizations like credit card companies, as reported by DIGITAL TRANSACTIONS on March 27, 2008.

Aside Aite's survey also indicates rise in phishing. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) received some 25,683 reports of phishing in December 2007, according to the latest report from an association of payments network, software vendors, and various agencies of law enforcement. The statistics increased from 23,787 in December 2006.

Further, according to the report, even as phishing incidents increase, banks want to use more of e-mail to communicate with existing and prospective clients. About 94% of the responding banks in the survey conducted during January-March 2008 said that they either had plans to use or had already started using alerts in their e-mails. Correspondingly, banks that were using or thinking about adding banner ads to their e-mails was 72%.

Finally, the report says that only 20% of banks under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. use mechanism that potentially increases assurance to recipients that they are getting legitimate e-mails, as per the survey results from the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance. Compared to this percentage, a good 51% of the Fortune 500 companies for consumers are using the authentication technology. The technology enables recipients to verify if an inbound e-mail is from a genuine IP address.

Related article: Bank Issues Spam Alerts

» SPAMfighter News - 4/9/2008