Puddle Phishing

The number of phishing attacks against credit unions, small and regional banks since January has increased more than sevenfold. Fraudsters seeking to lure customers into revealing personal information often hit the small financial institution only once as opposed to hundreds of attacks each month for the larger or global banks. According to online fraud fighting specialist, Cyota, there were 22 CUs attacked last month by phishing scams. Websense Security Labs says more than 30 small financial institutions have been targeted by puddle phishing scams. The good news is that Cyota’s “FraudAction,” launched in late 2003, has dismantled more than 7,000 phishing sites in 65 countries and lowered an attack’s life expectancy to an average of five hours. Websense Security Labs says 45% of IT decision-makers surveyed stated that employees within their organization have clicked through URLs embedded within phishing emails. Half of the IT decision-makers surveyed do not believe that employees can accurately identify phishing sites and 32% of IT decision makers polled report that phishing attacks have caused security problems for their organizations in the past year.