Home Office Cyber Crime Strategy
The UK's Cyber Crime Strategy was published by the Home Office at the end of March. The foreward explains why cyber crime is such an important issue:
Cyber crime is no longer about those who seek to access computer systems for fun or to prove it can be done. The criminals behind such crimes are organised, and seek to take advantage of those using internet services. Whether this is for financial gain, or as threats to children, the effect on the victims can be devastating.
The Cyber Crime Strategy sets out the Home Office's plans for coordinating and delivering the UK Cyber Security Strategy which identified criminal use of cyber space as one of the principal threats to cyber security along with state and terrorist use. The Home Office is the lead department for developing policies to counter cyber crime and its impact on UK interests and specifically the citizen.
How does this affect UK organisations operating websites? The government believes it is promotion of the free flow of ideas, innovation of new products and services, strengthening of democratic ideals and greater economic benefits. The Home Office strategy does not duplicate work in other areas such as regulation of the internet and internet content, but it supports the conclusions in last year's Digital Britain report which highlighted the need for the UK to be a safe place for business and consumers:
Computers, the internet and electronic communications play an ever-increasing part in all our lives, with the use of the internet in the home, at work or in educational establishments now standard and continuing to grow. The impact increases as new, and often unpredicted, applications of technologies are quickly adopted by significant proportions of the population.
A robust and growing digital economy brings significant benefits to the UK, but is also attracting increased fraud. The Home Office believes it is necessary to promote good security and good security practices—but not simply through technical solutions, since many incidents are the result of poor practices or carelessness.
When considering web-enabled information systems, it is right to consider what the opportunities are for financial-based crime (e.g. online fraud, identity theft) and non-financial crimes such as threats to children, hate crimes, harassment and political extremism. When considering how to build privacy and security into business processes and information systems, consider all ways personal data and other information have value.
The strategy sets out fraud, data security and intellectual property theft as key threats to businesses. Takes these into account in your own risk assessments—the government thinks it will be good for your business. They may well be right.
Posted on: 09 April 2010 at 09:21 hrs
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