The phishing problem is a growing threat, and not just for larger banks.

• Position: Marketing News

Phishing is growing in volume and sophistication and community banks are increasingly being targeted, according to Kevin Joy, vice president of BrandProtect, Toronto, Canada, a company that offers online brand management.

Attacks in their earliest form used to be single sites that simply acquired credit card information; in most cases, stopping the attack was merely a matter of locating the source and taking down the Web site.

"Within a few short years, phishing has evolved far beyond this basic level," Joy says. Experienced phishers can now set up multiple Web pages through various host countries to avoid detection. The intent is to use one site to capture as much information as possible in a short period and then quickly move to another. In many cases, a phishing attack can last for weeks or even longer as perpetrators can registered and abandon fraudulent Web sites hundreds of times over.

Detecting or remediating a phishing incident has become a highly complex and resource-intensive task, Joy notes. "It requires sophisticated tracking capabilities." Moreover, it also demands considerable human intervention to deal with domain registrars and law enforcement agencies in multiple countries as well as ongoing customer communication and persistent monitoring.

"Many larger financial institutions have the infrastructure and monetary resources to deploy sophisticated...