RSA's Anti-Fraud Command Center, which publishs a monthly report on fraud, said the worldwide distribution of organizations attacked remained relatively unchanged in the last few months – although Latin American institutions have joined the list for the first time.

After the United States and the UK, the highest number of attacks were reported against Spain (6%), Italy (5%), Canada (4%), Australia (2%), Colombia (2%), South Africa (2%), Peru (1%) and Costa Rica (1%).

Meanwhile, RSA said attacks hosted under an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN), which can be used to easily spoof a financial institution's Web site, are on the rise. They use alternate alphabets, such as Cyrillic where letters correspond to their Latin counterparts. A spoofed phishing domain based on an IDN can look exactly like a genuine bank's domain written in standard code.

It is the same institutions that continue to be the victims of attacks. Nationwide banks now account for 43% of financial institutions targeted in the U.S. Credit Unions are the victims of 40% of all attacks. But regional banks have witnessed a decline in attacks, at just 17%.

Attacks largely originate in the U.S. (47%) and China (22%). Hong Kong and Germany follow with 7%.

New entries in October to the top 10 list of countries hosting phishing attacks were Switzerland and India, with 3% each.

With phishing and identity theft on the rise, consumer protection has become a bigger priority than ever for U.S. state legislators. More than 200 bills focusing on identity theft are currently pending at state level.