UK catching up US in Internet crime league

“This national US report should act as a wake-up call to any company that is failing to securely protect its IT resources,” says David Hobson, managing director of IT security consultancy GSS. “Organised criminal gangs are now commonplace on the Internet and they are after your company’s money. How they achieve their fraud is irrelevant. If they can find a way in, they will,” he adds. Hobson makes the point that, despite the fact that the IC3 study is supposedly a national US annual report, it concludes that the UK is now in second position, with 15.3% when it comes to the origin of US Internet crime reports. “This is significantly ahead of other cyber-crime hotspots, such as Nigeria [5.7%] and Romania [1.5%],” he says. “It’s also worth noting that Internet crime in the US hit an all-time high in 2007, with an almost 20% increase on the fraud reported in 2006.” Putting scale on that, it’s worth noting that the IC3 referred 90,008 complaints of crime to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies across the US. That’s around one complaint every six minutes throughout the year. “If that statistic doesn’t make a company IT manager sit up and take note, I don’t know what will,” comments Hobson.