Phishing is the latest and most damaging fraud perpetrated by organised crime on the internet. It operates by sending consumers and businesses bogus emails asking them to log into a fake website and enter their account details – thus enabling fraudsters to steal at will and making phishing a multi-million dollar problem globally. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group the number of active reported phishing sites has tripled over the period from October 2004 to May 2005, and reports are now appearing almost daily warning of increasing volumes of phishing traffic.

Geoff Bennett, Director of Product Marketing at StreamShield, comments: "Phishing is the first serious example of a "blended" content security threat because it combines delivery via email with identity theft via a spoofed web page. It is undermining public confidence in e-commerce in the same way that spam undermines the effectiveness of email as a communication tool. A typical spoof site only stays online for an average of 48 hours so a rapid, automated network based capability is a vital part of an anti-phishing blended response."

StreamShield's CSG-3100 content security gateway is designed for deployment within service provider's network for identifying and blocking a range of content related threats including phishing. StreamShield's anti-phishing strategy is based on three integrated techniques: identification and blocking of mass phishing mailings in the service provider's network; extraction of bogus URLs and blocking access to fraudulent websites in the service provider's network; digital fingerprinting of e‑commerce sites to ensure web content is coming from legitimate sites.

Bennett continues: "Placing advanced phishing protection capabilities in service provider's networks provides consumers and businesses with the best protection against this major problem."