The number of victims to online theft is on the
increase, so why is the government and its law enforcement agencies
not doing enough to protect users, asks Simon Moores
The full impact of technology in the fight against crime
only came to me recently, when I found myself making a 999 call
from a windswept seafront in Kent.
A good kilometre from the centre of town, I was starting to
despair over how long it was taking for the police operator to
record my home address and position when she suddenly interjected,
“I can see them now on the CCTV.”
With my phone still pressed to my ear, I scanned around. Where
on earth was the camera, I wondered. Two minutes later a police car
arrived, and seven youths with hooded sweatshirts and baseball caps
were arrested.
But the incident left me thinking that the grip of the
surveillance society extends further than I had imagined.
With a General Election perhaps only six months away, all the
political parties are expressing increasingly tougher messages on
crime and its causes but none of them appear to have any real
answers to crime on the streets and crime on the internet.
In fact, because the former is more immediate and experienced
more regularly by the greater part of the population, the impact of
the latter is not given the real attention it needs in an economy
that is placing greater emphasis on the importance of online
trading.
Research from LogicaCMG reveals that more than a million people
in the UK have become victims of online security breaches and that
one in 20 consumers have either lost or experienced an attempt to
steal their financial or personal details while shopping or banking
on the internet.
The result, says the report, is a loss of confidence in the
medium, with 43% comparing this to the experience of being robbed
and 31% claiming a loss of trust in the brand or the company
involved.
At this month's Serious & Organised Crime conference in
London a report by Robson Rhodes, revealed that at the opposite end
of the spectrum, 17% of companies - mostly banks and online
retailers - had either had their identity stolen or experienced an
attempt to steal that identity for purposes such as phishing for
personal financial information.
Robson Rhodes describes identity theft and economic crime as “a
serious and growing threat to all companies” and reports that 59%
of businesses in their FTSE 100 and 250 survey group expect the
problem to grow over the next three years. It found that 54% of
respondents have had to take disciplinary action against
perpetrators in the past 12 months.
Many companies are reporting losses of 3% to 5% of turnover as a
consequence of fraud of all kinds and the cost to UK business is
estimated at £32bn with the costs of prevention at a further £8bn
annually.
There is an unpleasant reality to consider here, in a world
where the CCTV cameras are more likely to be owned by serious and
organised criminals watching you type your Pin number into your
local cash point machine.
Without a doubt, government of any colour has to do more to
protect confidence in the online environment. Only this month, in a
landmark case, the first of its kind in the UK, four eastern
Europeans appeared at Bow Street Magistrates Court charged with
conspiracy to defraud financial institutions through the use of a
phishing scam.
While government attempts to protect society from paedophiles
and anti-social behaviour, it may be losing the initiative
elsewhere, after all, in cyberspace, nobody can hear you dialling
999.
Setting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of leading industry analyst Dr Simon Moores of
Zentelligence.
Acting globally, Zentelligence (Research) advises
governments, suppliers, business and the media on the evolution,
application and delivery of leading-edge technologies, and
specialises in the areas of e-government and information
security.
For further information on Zentelligence and its research,
presentation and analyst services, visitwww.zentelligence.com