Global Secure Systems (GSS), an IT security consultancy, says the release this week of the 2007 Internet Crime Report by the Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) in the US shows that the UK is now catching up with the US in being a hotbed of cybercrime.
It's significant to note that, despite the fact that the IC3 study is supposedly a national US annual report, it concludes that the UK is in second position with 15.3 per cent when it comes to the origin of US Internet crime reports, said David Hobson, GSS's managing director.
This is significantly ahead of other cybercrime hotspots such as Nigeria (5.7 per cent) and Romania (1.5 per cent). It's also worth noting that Internet crime in the US hit an all-time high in 2007, with an almost 20 per cent increase on the fraud reported in 2006, he added.
According to Hobson, reported Internet crime losses are only the tip of the cybercrime iceberg, as there are many more cases that go unreported for various reasons.
This national US report should act as a wake-up call to any company that is failing to securely protect its IT resources. 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 said.
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, day and night. If that statistic doesn't make a company IT manager sit up and take note, I don't know what will, he added.
For more on the IC3's 2007 annual report on Internet crime:
http://tinyurl.com/2m8btn
For more on GSS:
GSS says UK is catching the US up in the Internet crime league
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