E-crime in need of urgent, specialist attention
Almost three-quarters of businesses want a central or national body to deal with e-crime in the UK, says a recent report by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) putting the cost of crime against business at £12.6bn, over a sixth of the total cost of all crime in the UK. Now Paul Simmonds, former chief information and security officer at chemicals giant ICI has highlighted the lack of a national police unit dealing with online crime. Perhaps Scotland should bid to set up e-Yard.
At the Infosec Conference in London, Simmonds called for a unit to be set up ”as Scotland Yard said that it was still waiting for the government to approve its proposed £5.3m e-crime centre, which would begin with an initial investment of £1.3m."
He noted that government spending on the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was only approximately 10% of what was spent on tackling gun crime and tonly a tenth of SOCA spending was on online crime.
“That means the UK is spending only 1% on high tech crime of what is spent on drug crime,” he said. “But global internet crime has overtaken drugs crime. What we desperately need is investment and a response to what's happening.”
Simmonds said he had preferred being able to liaise with the National High Tech Crime Unit, but communication became more difficult after it was incorporated into SOCA in 2006.
The British Chamber of Commerce study - Invisible Crime: A Business Crime Survey, looked at 3,900 businesses nationwide and asked a wide-ranging series of questions about the effects of criminal activity on companies.
The research found 94% of businesses had suffered from spam in the last three months, with 31% claiming to have been the victim of phishing. In 2004 when the last report was carried out, there was no category on phishing, showing the changes in cybercrime during the last four years.
"What we want to see is a national body that can take action, because obviously computer crime is not location specific and does not fit in to regional police forces," said BCC policy advisor Gareth Elliott.
Malware was impacting on nearly a quarter of businesses, with 23% suffering from spyware infection and 19% experiencing equipment failure or data loss following virus infection. Credit card fraud had risen from 6% in the 2004 survey to 11% in 2008.
Meantime, Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie, who now works in covert policing is heading up Scotland Yard’s case for the £5.3m, 50-strong, national e-crime reporting and response unit. She is reported as still waiting for an answer from the Home Office minister Vernon Coaker.
Sources: http://www.computerworlduk.com
http://www.itpro.co.uk/
BCC report at: http://tinyurl.com/5gxqlc