Business e-crime survey from the British Chamber of Commerce

About three quarters of businesses think a national body should be established to deal with e-crime, according to survey by the British Chamber of Commerce.

The British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) has published The Invisible Crime: A Business Crime Survey 2008, a survey which questioned 3,900 businesses in the UK. It revealed that a quarter of firms have had data stolen with only 11% protecting data through encryption technology.

Spam is the biggest source of e-crime with 94% of businesses experiencing it in the past year.

Other e-crimes recorded were phishing attacks with 31% affected. Spyware infected 23% of businesses, 11% were hit by credit card fraud and 7% of businesses were hacked.

The BCC report outlined what businesses are doing to counter e-crime. "Four-fifths of businesses use anti-virus software to help combat computer-related incidents and 77% use Spam filtering software. Seventy four per cent routinely back-up their business data 70% store their data off-site. 63% have installed a software-based firewall and 51% a hardware firewall, whilst 40% have developed a strong password policy and 21% have compiled an asset inventory," said the BCC report.