Time Up for Phishing with Effective Anti-Phishing Research Strategies

Public awareness is a significant factor in the battle against online identity theft (phishing). Advancing public readiness can be a strategic protection mechanism for citizens' vulnerability and privacy. Further, an effective research strategy against phishing is the combination of increased social awareness with software quality and social computing. The latter will decrease phishing victims and will improve information systems quality. First, the authors discuss recent research results on software quality criteria used for the design of anti-phishing technologies. Second, it is argued that the dynamics of social surroundings affect citizens' trust and can compromise social security. Third, the authors outline basic research needs and strategic steps to be taken for timely citizens' protection. Last, the authors propose strategic research directions for improving information systems total quality management through international collaborative research and by focusing on: i) increasing social awareness; ii) predicting information phishing attempts; iii) adopting social computing approaches.