Financial Institutions: Fight Back Against Unwanted Email

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"Reporting fraud works. I can't stress this enough. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has suspended trading of stocks featured in spam and frozen assets of those profiting from market manipulation. The CastleCops' Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination (PIRT) project has shut down thousands of fake bank websites. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have issued millions of dollars in fines for unwanted faxes. Knujon has shutdown more than 22,000 spam websites. Every single one of these success happened because people took the time to report," he said.

Cooperating with Law Enforcement is something that Bruen also recommends. "It is the policy of many institutions to internally handle all security breaches that are not armed robbery. Ironically, armed bank robbers don't get that much money and are almost always caught. More sophisticated bank theft goes unreported, embezzlers are quietly terminated. Bankers may believe that making this information public hurts their reputation with customers or shareholders, but not reporting it deprives the FBI of crucial information they need to connect the dots between crimes at multiple institutions," Bruen noted. "The best and biggest example I will point to is the TJX breach which was kept quiet for a considerable amount of time. During that time a lot of credit card accounts and money were stolen. If it was reported to law enforcement earlier, it could have been stopped more quickly," he concluded.