The Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union (PSECU) has signed up for Cyota's FraudAction anti-phishing package as Internet monitors report a sharp rise in fraudulent online attacks against credit unions and smaller regional US banks.
Cyota's FraudAction service includes real-time detection of phishing and pharming attacks, shutting down fraudulent sites, conducting forensic work to help catch fraudsters, and patent-pending counter-measures. PSECU is also protected by Cyota's blocking network, which monitors for attacks, and blocks access to phishing sites via partnerships with leading anti-spam providers and ISPs.
Psecu is an early adopter of the service among credit unions, says the vendor, joining several months ago when the first signs of attacks against credit unions appeared. Cyota's Anti-Fraud Command Center (AFCC) reports that it has seen a 633 percent increase in the number of credit unions, regional and mid- to small-sized banks attacked by fraudsters in 2005.
The figures are in line with reports from the Anti-Phishing Working Group, which in February noted that phishers are using advanced software to hijack larger arrays of Internet technologies and are at the same time using them to attack smaller banks.
Amir Orad, Cyota executive vice president, says credit unions and community banks can no longer afford to take a wait and see approach to online security.
He says: "Now that some of the larger banks have implemented stronger security measures, phishing is definitely moving downstream, and for the first time we've begun to see small to mid-sized banks getting attacked more frequently than larger banks."