Phishing frenzy may ease slightly in 2014

Enterprise Innovation editors
10 Feb 2014
00:00

Phishing volumes will not drop considerably in 2014, though there may be a slight decline, according to RSA’s latest Online Fraud report.

This is expected in the wake of 2013, yet another record year in the number of phishing attacks launched globally.

With nearly 450,000 attacks and record estimated losses of over $5.9 billion, phishing remains an ominous threat to consumers and businesses around the world.

In 2014, the decline is expected to be mainly due to growing adoption of email authentication, namely DMARC, which together with tighter policy should help in the reduction of phishing emails received by end users.

Also, RSA forecasts that big data analytics and broader intelligence collection will lead to faster detection and quicker mitigation, resulting in lower financial losses.

Further, greater end-user awareness will serve to reduce losses. Cyber awareness has become a mainstream conversation topic—people are becoming more aware of the dangers in the digital world.

To help counter the stealth in malware, RSA recommends that organizations to do the following:

  1. Protect information based on how they are used;
  2. Develop techniques for describing cybersecurity risks in business terms and integrate the use of business estimates into risk-advisory process;
  3. Establish a business-centric risk assessment process;
  4. Set a course for evidence-based controls assurance; and
  5. Develop informed data collection methods.

Last year, noticeable attack methods included the Bouncer attack that filtered incoming victims based on a unique URL parameter values. Not having the “right” parameter value would send the unwitting users to a standard 404-page.

The country most targeted, unsurprisingly, was the United States, suffering over 60% of worldwide phishing volumes.

Other countries in the top 10 most targeted by phishing in 2013 were India, Australia, the UK, Germany,, South Africa, Canada, The Netherlands, Colombia and Brazil.

In terms of regions, North America was the most targeted, followed by EMEA (including the UK) with 26% of global phishing volumes.

In APAC, the top three countries and their estimated losses for phishing were India, with 54% of phishing volumes and total estimated losses at $225 million; Australia, 21% at $87 million; and China, 14% at $59 million.

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