Phishing caused an estimated loss of $225 million in 2013, according to RSA’s Fraud Report 2013. India emerged as the top nation in APAC region in terms of phishing attack by volume, closely followed by Australia and China.
While total number of phishing attacks saw a marginal rise—448,126 in 2013 against 445,004 in 2012—the global loss due to such attacks quadrupled from an estimated $1.5 billion in 2012 to $5.9 billion in 2013.
The US and Canada remained the most targeted countries with a total of 63 percent of the phishing attacks directed at them.
The report expects phishing volumes to see a slight decline in 2014. The decline will 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.
RSA also believes that big data analytics and broader intelligence collection will lead to faster detection and quicker mitigation of phishing attacks, resulting in lower financial losses.
“With millions of spam messages traversing the internet on a daily basis, separating the wheat from the chaff has become far more challenging. Advancements in phishing techniques and methods also serve to add a layer of complexity to detection. Deploying analytics into the detection process provides a way to see through the noise and get to the phish faster. Coupled with broader intelligence collection, attacks may be prevented before they are launched,” the report opines.
Also, 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. More awareness translates directly into fewer losses,” according to the report.