Analysts confirm phishing threat to consumer commerce

I came across a great whitepaper on bitpipe yesterday, distilling much of the latest thinking on phishing prevention. The Activcard Whitepaper highlights the explosive impact of phishing on ecommerce. According to the whitepaper, Gartner believes Phishing may halve the growth rates of ecommerce growth by 2007 unless rapidly addressed. Meanwhile Javelin strategy reports that 8 out of 9 consumers are altering their online habits in response to ID fraud and that just 1 in 5 consumers believes banks are 'extremely' competent in protecting their identity. Meanwhile banks continue to experience around 75% of phishing attacks, and Citibank alone experiences more than half of worldwide attacks. Activcard (predictably) suggests that static passwords are a fundamental weakness in bank security systems and suggests dynamic passwords and user authentication as critical elements of an anti-phishing solution.