RSA, the security division of EMC, a manufacturer of systems for information management, has reached a milestone in the fight against cyber-crime via its FraudAction service. Through the FraudAction anti-phishing and anti-Trojan service, RSA has shut down more than 500,000 cyber-attacks across 185 countries for its global customers and has helped them to prevent an estimated USD7.5 billion in potential fraud losses.

The RSA FraudAction service is desgined to help protect customers, primarily in the banking and online retail industries, against phishing, pharming and Trojan attacks. The service is provides monitoring and fraud detection, alerts and reporting, forensics and countermeasures, and attack site blocking and shutdown.

The RSA FraudAction Research Lab has recently estimated that worldwide losses determined by phishing attacks during the 12-month period of the second half 2010 through the first half 2011 reached nearly USD billion with more than one-third of those losses coming from organizations located in the US and UK.

According to November 2011 data compiled by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the number of worldwide phishing attacks in H1 2011 (115,472) is up more than double over the same period last year (48,244) and almost matches the full-year phishing attack totals for 2010. Nevertheless, the median phishing site uptime for attacks has decreased by more than 22 percent year-over-year (from 13 hours, 42 minutes, to 10 hours, 44 minutes).