Beware Criminals On Phishing Trips

Spear phishing exploits, where hackers target specific individuals or departments in a company with emails designed to get them to reveal sensitive information, are on the increase, recent research shows.

"I wrote about the social engineering factor in security breaches a couple of weeks ago, highlighting how social engineering has emerged as a key weapon in the arsenal of criminals working to break into corporate networks. Citing the findings of a recent multi-university study on phishing, I had argued that knowledge of new scams is a far more effective deterrence against being victimized than computer literacy alone. In a related vein, a new report published on Computerworld suggests that phishing has emerged as a major security threat vector for businesses.

Phishing is hardly a new problem and has existed since the emergence of email communications. In its traditional form, phishing entails the crafting of messages that masquerade as originating from trustworthy organizations in an attempt to acquire sensitive data such as usernames, passwords and credit card information."