Nationwide Improves Anti-Phishing Techniques

Nationwide Building Society was facing intermittent attacks by phishers so it decided to improve its anti-phishing measures to be able to shut down fraudulent sites quickly. Vnunet published this, April 19, 2007.

Nationwide Building Society is a financial services firm, authorized and established for Financial Services Authority with regard to financial services like insurance, unit trust, assurance, regulated mortgages and pensions.

It was getting extremely tough to bring down phishing sites fast and manage the increasing number of customer reports about phishing attacks or dubious websites, said Peter Corrie, Head of Strategic Fraud Initiative of Nationwide. Computerweekly published this, April 20, 2007.

As online fraud exponentially increases year after year, it becomes imperative for Nationwide and other such companies to nip the problem in the bud, so that there is minimum revenue loss and maximum protection for members, Corrie said. Computerweekly published this, April 20, 2007.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) estimated that 90% of phishing assaults targeted financial services companies in December 2006. It also accounted, $1 billion worth financial losses due to phishing every year. Nationwide was a leading financial institution in Europe suffering bouts of attacks from online scammers.

As the criminal community evolves techniques to manipulate online banking services, it becomes more difficult to develop one solution to tackle all the problems, said Peter Cassidy, secretary general of APWG. Computing published this in news, April 19, 2007.

Previously, 'Nationwide' employees manually traced the phishing sources but now it has an automatic mechanism that has reduced the number of phishing victims. This is in part to fulfill a campaign to cope with e-crime, said Corrie.

Phishing attacks involve deceptive e-mails that take people to a phisher's website and then ask for personal and financial information like Social Security, bank account and credit card numbers. Therefore, when recipients doubt e-mails they should not click on links or open any attachment.

Reputed financial services organizations like Nationwide are fast realizing the urgency and strategic importance of adopting forceful and proactive steps against phishers and other cyber criminals, said Irfan Salim, President and CEO of MarkMonitor. Digital50 published this, April 18, 2007.

» SPAMfighter News - 4/30/2007