March 24, 2008
Welcome to the first Brandmail Solutions "Last Week in the News" blog post. Each Monday, we'll discuss a few notable articles from the past week. These articles will touch on topics relevant to the email sender and ISP communities. Some topics of note will be phishing and spamming, email authentication, branding, online advertising, email statistics, and others.
I'm Seth Redmore, and I'll be your host while you're here. Thanks for joining us. Please feel free to drop me a
with thoughts or opinions.
Our first article comes from the good folks over at eMarketer.
They have released revised online advertising growth numbers. Growth rates are predicted to slow this year…to a 23% growth rate. Recession? Bring it on.
One of several interesting points that they make is (essentially) that technology is going to make the difference - with
"…factors that will create spending buoyancy: measurability with a better understanding of the audience, more effective ad placements resulting in increased prices, easier purchases for advertisers and their agencies through networks and exchanges, better targeting, wooing audiences through video advertising and reaching that vital audience by following eyeballs."
I used to work over at Cisco, and I know that they'd be as proud as new parents. (Link)
In the "unfortunately not as good news" department, RSA (the security company) has reported that
"Phishing attacks on banking organisations and their customers across the globe have increased steadily over the last six months"
Almost 200 (well, 188, to be precise) different banks were targeted - and these are just the ones that they found out about. Anybody who thinks that phishing is "just a Paypal problem" should probably go check their bank balance.
Another interesting factoid from RSA speaks to the geographic nature of attack types. The region that they point out specifically is Germany, where
"more than 90 per cent of online banking fraud is the direct result of Trojans.
The same can be said for Benelux, Switzerland and other geographies. In these geographies, regulations or laws have mandated strong authentication at login for online banking services…"
Of course, email authentication goes a long ways towards taking the hook off the phisher's line; and its nice to see the adoption of authentication technologies without government mandate. (Link)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is having a party!
"The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection will host a half-day roundtable discussion on phishing education on Tuesday, April 1, 2008."
Who wants to send out the April Fool's Day FTC phishing email?
If you're in the neighborhood (Washington, D.C.), and you care about how the government is helping to fight phishing, stop by. After a "guided discussion" (I can't help but think of a séance), they're going to have a working session to flesh out different ways to increase consumer awareness about phishing. (Link) |
