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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 11:44 pm
Time: 11:44 pm
Results for cybercrime (u.k.)
3 results foundAuthor: Great Britain. Comptroller and Auditor General Title: The UK Cyber Security Strategy: Landscape Review Summary: A National Audit Office review of the Government’s strategy for cyber security indicates that, although it is at an early stage, activities are already beginning to deliver benefits. The cost of cyber crime to the UK is currently estimated to be between £18 billion and £27 billion. Business, government and the public must therefore be constantly alert to the level of risk if they are to succeed in detecting and resisting the threat of cyber attack. The UK Cyber Security Strategy, published in November 2011, set out how the Government planned to deliver the National Cyber Security Programme through to 2015, committing £650 million of additional funding. Building on ten years’ experience of seeking to protect government information, systems and networks, the strategy placed greater emphasis on the role of the public and industry in helping secure the UK against attacks and also the opportunities to UK business from a growing market in cyber security. Among progress reported so far, the Serious Organised Crime Agency repatriated more than 2.3 million items of compromised card payment details to the financial sector in the UK and internationally since 2011, preventing a potential economic loss of more than £500 million. In the past year, moreover, the public reported to Action Fraud over 46,000 reports of cyber crime, amounting to £292 million worth of attempted fraud. The NAO identifies six key challenges faced by the Government in implanting its cyber security strategy in a rapidly changing environment. These are the need to influence industry to protect and promote itself and UK plc; to address the UK’s current and future ICT and cyber security skills gap; to increase awareness so that people are not the weakest link; to tackle cyber crime and enforce the law; to get government to be more agile and joined-up; and to demonstrate value for money. The NAO recognizes, in particular, that there are some challenges in establishing the value for money of the cyber security strategy. There is the conceptual problem that, if cyber attacks do not occur, it will be difficult to establish the extent to which that was down to the success of the strategy. There is also the challenge of determining the relative contribution to overall success or otherwise of different components of the strategy. And there is the challenge of assigning a value to the overall outcome, to set against the cost of the strategy. The Government has work underway to measure the benefits of the strategy. The report is designed to set the scene in an area likely to be of continuing interest to the Committee of Public Accounts. Although the Committee has not specifically examined the issue of cyber security, it raised concerns about cyber security in relation to the government’s plans for smart meters, which will enable energy suppliers to collect meter readings over the internet, as well as pointing to a lack of detail on cyber security plans in the Government’s 2011 ICT strategy. Details: London: National Audit Office, 2013. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 15, 2013 at: http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/1213/cyber_security.aspx Year: 2013 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/1213/cyber_security.aspx Shelf Number: 127624 Keywords: Computer CrimesCyber SecurityCybercrime (U.K.) |
Author: Great Britain. House of Commons. Home Affairs Committee Title: E-crime: Fifth Report of Session 2013-14 Summary: 1. We live in a world where terms like "Cyber crime" no longer belong in the realm of science fiction. Modern devices such as smart phones and tablets have brought the internet not only to our fingertips but to our bedsides, our pockets and to our children. And yet there is strong evidence that access to such technology, with all its opportunities and benefits, can put our businesses and our families at increasing risk of exploitation and internet-based crime (E-crime). 2. Identity theft, industrial espionage, credit card fraud, phishing, child exploitation - criminals use the internet as a means to commit a wide range of crimes. Perpetrators range from lone hackers, activist groups, Nation States sponsoring industrial espionage and organised criminal gangs. Victims include individuals who fall prey to scams and password theft to multinational companies such as, famously Sony. The financial details of 23,000 users of Sony Online Entertainment were stolen when its networks were breached by hackers in March 2011. The cost of the clean-up was reportedly $172m and the events caused a 9 % share price drop. 3. The internet has also been used to great effect by criminals to trade their cyber wares. Investigators have uncovered sophisticated black market operations such as DarkMarket and ShadowCrew who use the internet to trade cloned credit card data and bank account details, hire botnets (infected networks of computers) and deliver hacking tutorials. Although difficulties in establishing precise figures about the rate and the cost of cyber crime are acknowledged there is general agreement on its rapidly growing scale. Norton have calculated its global cost to be $388bn dollars a year in terms of financial losses and time lost. This is significantly more than the combined annual value of $288bn of the global black market trade in heroin, cocaine and marijuana. 4. UK governments have had a centralised approach to cyber crime and wider cyber threats since the launch of the UK's first Cyber Security Strategy in June 2009 and the corresponding National Cyber Security Programme (NCSP) launched in November 2011. In the course of this inquiry we have looked specifically at the Home Office's remit under its much heralded Cyber Security Strategy. Details: London: The Stationery Office Limited, 2013. 165p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 8, 2013 at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/70/70.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/70/70.pdf Shelf Number: 129591 Keywords: Computer CrimeCybercrime (U.K.)Internet CrimeTechnology and Crime |
Author: Oxford Economics Title: Cyber-attacks: Effects on UK Companies Summary: Gary Becker's seminal 1968 paper on the economics of crime shaped the way economists think about crime policy and is still applied in many contexts today. Becker explored the decision making function of rational criminal actors, suggesting that criminals choose to engage in illicit activity based on their own assessment of the costs and benefits. Rational criminal actors weigh up the potential yield from a criminal act, the risk of being caught and the severity of the punishment. The decision making process of state-sponsored cyber-attacks differs from that of ordinary criminals in important ways, which may potentially limit the direct applicability of the traditional economic models of crime such as Becker's. State-sponsored attackers are characterised by the very fact that a "non-profit" state entity is involved (as opposed to Becker's individual "for profit" criminals), potential information asymmetry, a perception of immunity from prosecution and the intangible value attributed to acts of patriotism (which does not figure in traditional economic approaches to crime, such as Becker's). At the same time, there is value in understanding the economic theory of crime, as advanced by Becker. States are unlikely to change their activities in the short term, particularly because of non-pecuniary/distorted concepts of returns. However they may do so in the long term, especially if deterred by adequate security measures and changes in operational procedures, (i.e. if the costs of cyber-attacks rise) and as they realise that the returns to cyber-attacks may be mixed at best . This again points to a need for firms to understand the nature of - and threat posed by - current attacks, so as to raise the costs of cyber-attacks for nation-state perpetrators in order to help deter future attacks. Apart from the implications for individual firms, cyber-attacks impact on the UK economy as a whole in two major ways: - Increasing the cost of doing business - Distorting the pattern of long run investment ("dynamic effects") Survey work on the nature of cyber-attacks in the UK undertaken by Oxford Economics and the Ponemon Institute found the following: - Cyber-attacks are a common problem. 60% of respondents had experienced a cyber-attack within the last 12 months. - Loss estimates were highest for damage to reputation/branding. All other costs were reported with raw averages around the $2 million mark, with adjusted means slightly under half that and medians of $175,000. However, the raw average reputation/branding loss estimate was $2.9 million. - Intellectual property and commercially sensitive data is stolen in all sectors, but by no means happens to everyone. With this in mind it is interesting to note that 80% of respondents reported that they had not experienced any IP or commercially sensitive information loss in the last 24 months. - The majority of firms who did suffer a loss of IP or commercially sensitive information felt they were damaged by it. 61% said that they had experienced a loss of competitive advantage due to the loss of IP. 59% said that they had experienced a loss of competitive advantage due to the loss of commercially sensitive information. - The most common loss of competitive advantage came in the shape of "compromised negotiations or business ventures" (31%), followed by the "appearance of copied products or practise" (20%) and the "emergence of new competition" (19%). - While only a minority of companies suffer IP/commercially sensitive information losses, the cost of such losses is considerably higher than is the case for "day to day" losses. The adjusted mean loss of IP was valued at $13.2 million and the adjusted mean loss of commercially sensitive business information was valued at $12.8 million. In addition to the survey of UK firms, which identifies the direct costs incurred as a result of cyber-attacks, Oxford Economics has undertaken an event study to analyse the potential reputational loss firms may suffer. As a proxy for reputational damage we use negative stock market returns that may be experienced immediately around the public disclosure of a cyber-attack. Although further confirmatory analysis would be useful, our results suggest that publicised cyber-attacks do generally have impacts on stock market valuations and, by extension, upon corporate reputations. If this is the case, it means that the investment companies make in IT security to prevent these attacks may maintain shareholder value for these companies. Details: Oxford, UK: Oxford Economics, 2014. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 25, 2014 at: http://www.cpni.gov.uk/documents/publications/2014/oxford-economics-cyber-effects-uk-companies.pdf?epslanguage=en-gb Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.cpni.gov.uk/documents/publications/2014/oxford-economics-cyber-effects-uk-companies.pdf?epslanguage=en-gb Shelf Number: 133418 Keywords: Commercial CrimesComputer CrimesCosts of CrimeCrimes Against BusinessesCyber SecurityCybercrime (U.K.)Economic AnalysisEconomic Crimes |