The UK's Nationwide Building Society is using technology supplied by San Francisco-based MarkMonitor to identify and shut down phishing scams and bogus Web sites.
MarkMonitor says Nationwide managed to shut down hundreds of phishing scams within the first few months of going live with its anti-phishing technology.
The vendor's fraud detection network uses proprietary technology to automatically scan and analyse information from a wide range of sources.
Prior to the MarkMonitor implementation, Nationwide staff manually tracked phishing scams carried out against the bank.
"It became extremely difficult to shut down phishing sites quickly enough and cope with the number of incoming e-mails from customers reporting phishing attacks or suspicious-looking Web sites," says Peter Corrie, head, strategic fraud initiative, Nationwide. "MarkMonitor has enabled us to quickly address daily online fraud activities so we can refocus our energies on emerging, future threats."
In December the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA) told the Lords science and technology committee that Britain's financial services sector has experienced a massive 8000% increase in online phishing scams in the past two years. The FSA's financial crime team said incidents of phishing were set to rise by 90% for the second year running.