SUMMARY

This white paper aims to inform the reader about the diverse and constantly-evolving phishing threats, and how these threats can account for a company's substantial loss in customers, productivity, and brand credibility.

Phishing is a criminal, fraudulent mechanism which uses the Internet to acquire susceptible personal information, such as usernames, passwords or credit card details by masquerading as a reliable business website or electronic communication.

Even though vendors started to offer solutions more proactively since 2002, the Latin American market is still in a developing stage, becoming increasingly popular and more established in information technology outsourcing.

It is estimated that the growth in security threats will be higher in 2009 due to the international financial crisis, which has impacted several countries in the region during the first two quarters of the year (mostly Mexico, as its economy is severely interrelated to that of the U.S.), in a chain reaction which generated massive layoffs and dismissals. In this scenario, former employees might take advantage of their knowledge of the company's internal infrastructure to initiate attacks. The international financial crisis has postponed many ongoing and future outsourced security projects, mostly in multinational companies that have to comply with headquarter budgetary controls, even though in many cases, outsourcing means cost and investment reductions.

Other factors, such as the lack of quantifiable return on investment (ROI) and high prices, still limit the number of contracts signed for monitoring services and threat control in the region in the short term. In some vertical segments, such as banking and finance and the government, there is still a very strong sensitivity in outsourcing the management of confidential information with unfamiliar companies and personnel, which is also an inhibitor of stronger growth of this market in Latin America in the short-term.

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