According to the RSA Anti Fraud Command Center, which tracks and dismantles phishing attacks, pharming and other online fraud techniques, phishing has been a steadily-growing menace to mid-sized and small financial institutions over the past year, with approximately 26% of all attacks recorded in June 2006 targeting regional US banks.

"Demonstrating that we are America's most convenient bank is part of the fiber of every aspect of our operation, including online security," says David Flaherty, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Commerce Bancorp. "Our customers rely on Commerce Bank to protect their assets and identities, and by partnering with RSA Security, a world leader in security and anti-fraud solutions, they can rest assured that we are taking that responsibility seriously and working behind the scenes to protect them."

Field-proven and in use today at more than 100 global financial institutions of all sizes, the RSA FraudAction solution is a complete anti- phishing and anti-pharming service. The service is designed for the real-time detection of phishing and pharming attacks and the shutting-down of fraudulent sites worldwide; the blocking of fraudulent URLs; forensic work to help catch fraudsters; and patent-pending countermeasures.

RSA FraudAction is operated by RSA Security's 24x7 Anti-Fraud Command Center - where more than 40 fraud analysts with focused expertise analyze and qualify online fraud attacks - as well as contacts at Internet Service Providers around the world who assist the Command Center in dismantling the fraudulent web sites. The war-room has worked to shut down more than 18,000 fraudulent sites in over 65 countries since its operations began.

"While there is a lot of buzz around Trojans, keyboard-loggers and various sophisticated attacks, the reality is that - today - most online fraud is conducted via phishing attacks. In fact, we see several thousand of them every month," states Chris Young, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Consumer Solutions Division, RSA Security. "Financial institutions need to take a layered approach to security in order to protect themselves and their customers from emerging threats. RSA FraudAction is a very simple layer to put in place: it is an effective, affordable and reliable service that can be deployed quickly to help tackle today's primary method of online fraud attack."