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Canada Now On Cyber-Threat List

Written by Evan Schuman
May 18th, 2011

A time-honored fraud detection technique is flagging transactions from high-risk countries and triple-checking them. The counter-move from cyberthieves has been to push operations to countries seen—for the moment, at least—as low-risk. That’s how Canada is suddenly becoming the home-away-from-home for a cyberthief’s stolen data. Canada has now locked in the number-two global slot for hosting phishing sites in 2011, a 319 percent increase from the prior year, according to stats released Wednesday (May 18) from security firm Websense.

When it comes to more aggressive cybercrime, Canada moves up on the list from 13th place to sixth place, reflecting a 53 percent increase. (Naturally, when it comes to criminal activity, the U.S. holds the number-one slot on both lists.) Rounding out the top phishing countries: Egypt in third; Germany in fourth; UK in fifth; The Netherlands in sixth; Russia in seventh; South Korea in eighth; France in ninth; and Brazil in 10th. For cybercrime hosting: France has the second slot; Russia the third; Germany the fourth; China the fifth; The Netherlands the seventh; South Korea the eighth; Romania the ninth; and UK the 10th.

Posted in E-Commerce, IT Strategy/Industry, Security/Fraud
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