RSA, The Security Division of EMC, has released its findings on phishing attacks in H1 2011 and estimates that India Inc has lost $27.8mn in H1 2011 alone. A majority of these were targeted phishing attacks aimed at leveraging known brands in fake emails that attempt to fool email recipients. RSA has also ranked India as the third most targeted country for phishing attacks after the US and UK.
Further, in the same period, RSA established that the US, UK and India made up approximately 51% of the attacks with approximate losses pegged at $268.9mn. In its October Fraud report, RSA had estimated that the worldwide losses from phishing attacks alone amounted to over $520 million during H1 2011.
Other highlights are:
RSA FraudAction service shut down its 500,000th online attack on behalf of its global customers and, to date, has helped them prevent an estimated US$7.5 billion** in potential fraud losses
According to November 2011 data compiled by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the number of worldwide phishing attacks in the first half of 2011 (115,472) is up more than double over the same period last year (48,244) and nearly matches the full-year phishing attack totals for 2010