Wales Initiates Fight Against E-Crime
Wales is initiating to lead in the battle against high-tech cyber
criminals under the 'E-Crime Wales Partnership'. The three-year plan of
action aims to protect organizations from online crime. By means of the
Web, the practice of online banking & electronic transfer of precious and
confidential information is growing. Consequently, home and businesses
users are increasingly being victimized by electronic crime.
Electronic crime implies criminal activities involving a computer or
network as the tool, target, or place of a crime. These classifications
are not exclusive and many of the activities can be considered as part of
one or more classifications. Sometimes these terms are also used to refer
to traditional crimes such as fraud, theft, blackmail, forgery, and
manipulation, which necessitate the use of computers or networks.
Wales is U.K.'s first state to establish such a lead. The
Electronic-Crime Wales Steering Group is the driver behind the fight
against cyber crime and teams up Welsh Assembly Govt., the 4 Welsh Police
Forces, the National High Tech Crime Unit, and lawyers HSBC and Morgan
Cole. The Department of Enterprise, Innovation and Networks within the
Welsh Assembly is playing the key role together with ICT and e-crime
agencies.
The initiative also plans to start a campaign to spread awareness of
e-crime among the Welsh police forces. It will commission a study on
e-crime to give a clear picture of the impact of such crime on Welsh
businesses and to pick out those most vulnerable to risk.
According to Assembly minister Andrew Davies, e-crime can severely affect
small and medium-sized enterprises. Chris Corcoran - Detective
Superintendent with the Police of North Wales & chairman of the E-Crime
Wales steering group noted that during the year 2004 the business losses
on account of E-crime reported to amount 160m pounds. However, he said
this was perhaps a small proportion of the actual cost, as small
companies did not report their problems fearing damage of their
reputation.
In the opinion of Marc Edwards, director of Capital Network Solutions, a
person needs to protect his virtual security with as much importance as
protecting physical security considering the potential risks that
confront businesses when entering the Internet.
Related article: Wales Businesses Are Susceptible to E-Crime
ยป SPAMfighter News - 12/29/2006