NEW CYBER SECURITY STUDY SHOWS CONSUMERS ARE OVERCONFIDENT ABOUT IDENTIFYING ONLINE SCAMS

WASHINGTON MAY 31, 2006 A new cyber security study released today highlights the difference between perception and reality of consumers awareness of online scams and their actual online behavior. While 87 percent of consumers polled said they were confident they could recognize fraudulent e-mails, 61 percent failed to identify a legitimate e-mail. Most respondents categorized all e-mails in the study as fake, even though one of them was legitimate. The Online Fraud Report has been sponsored by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), a central clearinghouse for cyber security awareness and education for home users, small businesses and the education community, and Bank of America.

In addition to researching behavior about e-mails, the study also presented images of sample Web sites and asked consumers whether they could identify whether a site was secure or not — 67 percent could not identify a secure Web site. Six out of 10 respondents relied on symbols, such as padlocks to determine whether a site was secure, while four in 10 consumers felt there was no real way to determine if a site was secure. ONLINE SCAMS

Your Online Security Authority
Bill Wardell

By Roger A. Grimes

May 01, 2006

The Great Train Robbery of 1963 netted $69 million in today’s dollars. The largest bank heists have scored more than $80 million. But “stick-’em-up” bank robberies offer high risks and low rewards: According to the FBI, the average U.S. bank heist yields just $4,200 — and between 50 and 75 percent of perpetrators get caught. Robbing a brick-and-mortar bank seems like petty theft compared with a new breed of cybercrime that, according to a growing number of security experts, is siphoning untold millions of dollars from banks and their customers using SSL-evading Trojans and ever more refined phishing techniques.

Every anti-virus and anti-malware vendor can report thousands of bank and e-commerce-specific Trojans designed to steal money and identities, often collectively referred to as Bancos/Banker variants. Yet given the vast investment in quelling consumers’ fears about conducting business online, it’s no surprise that few sources are anxious to provide information that highlights the severity of the problem.

Although the banking officials and security officers contacted for this article refused to be quoted on the record, all of them agreed that online bank fraud is an increasing problem. One banking regulatory security auditor told InfoWorld that in some instances, online bank fraud drains as much as 2 to 5 percent from a bank’s overall revenue. Mark Sunner, CTO of e-mail security provider MessageLabs, thinks it will take “a single, high-value tipping-point event” to wake up the general public, which would then pressure public officials. “I think the world’s largest bank heist will soon be committed using malware,” he says.

OSA Editorial Comments:

Finish reading or download the report here. This article and its premise, scares me to death! The thought this is possible, has been the main driving force behind creating the long overdue and anticipated “Sign the Petition” website.

It’s time to say: “enough is enough” or scream out from the rooftops that “Were not going to Take IT Anymore!!”

We as an Internet family have to band together and force politicians, the Federal Government and International leaders to make changes in how we treat Cyber Criminals.

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Your Online Security Authority
Bill Wardell