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We're all familiar with spam filling our inboxes and the millions of pounds being spent on email filtering and antivirus services every year, but a study performed by Xiphos Research Labs shows that over 60% of UK businesses don't make any effort to protect themselves, or you and I, from the ever increasing and serious risk of phishing

The most insidious and terrifying nature of phishing scams and targeted attacks is that they piggyback on the hard earned trust and reputation of websites we use every day. When you receive an email from your favourite retailer, you trust that they value you as a customer and wouldn't steal your password and credit card details or infect you with malware, but how do you know it's not a hacker or fraudster impersonating them

As you have doubtless heard by now, last Thursday news emerged of a major breach at the US credit referencing agency, Equifax. Although the company themselves have been reticent to provide many public details, what is known is that attackers were able to access internal databases and the details of up to 143 million people. There has been a raft of coverage regarding this incident in the US press however the numbers of people affected in the UK remain at the time of this writing, unknown and Equifax themselves remain resolutely close lipped. What is known is that Equifax hold credit details for up to 44 million people in the UK, and are regularly called upon for credit referencing purposes for organisation such as British Telecom, British Gas and Capital One among others. With regards the details that the as yet unknown attackers were able to access, these include; dates of birth, credit card numbers, telephone numbers, drivers licenses, addresses, and in the case of the US social security numbers (potential UK victims could well have had national insurance numbers purloined). Basically, the data sets that have been potentially acquired make identity fraud ridiculously simple. Although every week seems to bring news of yet another breach, the one that has impacted on Equifax has a potentially calamitous global impact.