E-mail phishing is a huge problem, and is likely to continue to cause great concern by security professionals, but there is a belief now held that those sorts of attacks will give way to much more sophisticated Trojan based attacks in future. Research conducted by the Information Security Forum (ISF) believes that phishing attacks will move away from the U.S. and other English-speaking countries towards Asia, China and the Middle East. The new threat for the English speaking Western World will be sophisticated and well-organized Trojan attacks. Nevertheless, the report highlighted the need for better education and awareness among Internet users as regards phishing and identity theft.
According to the report, this should be supported by a strong anti-phishing policy, continuous internet monitoring to identify phishing activity and better internal protection. In particular, with criminal gangs planting and grooming company 'moles', the need to secure customer databases from internal attack is becoming increasingly important.