Biometrics systems solutions are best suited to fight rapidly growing cybercrime.
This is according to Iona Press Services CEO, Matthew White, who was speaking at the e-government forum yesterday. The forum is part of the seventh annual African Computing and Telecommunications Summit, being held in Sandton from 4 to 7 October.
Many company executives are unaware that the biggest data loss they are likely to suffer happens internally, he said.
"Research firm Gartner predicts 60% of security breach incident costs, incurred by business this year, will be as a result of company insiders working alone or in conspiracy with outsiders," said White.
The crimes are mostly motivated by financial or political reasons, he said.
Easy targets
"The chances of an employee getting caught, given that the current state of protection, are minimal."
However, consequences of intellectual property theft are becoming more severe, which was highlighted by White`s example of a Durban-based company that dismissed its senior manager and had him charged with intellectual property theft worth R5.5 million.
Furthermore, a sharp rise in cybercrime and other information breaches last year was reported by the US National Computer Security Centre, White said.
"Of the 520 large US corporations such as government agencies and universities that responded, 64% reported intrusions, up by 16% in a year and the Internet was the main point of attack."
Intellectual property theft is a worldwide problem, White pointed out. He also warned that companies should not allow employees to use internal systems outside of work, as a company may be held liable for unfairly dismissing an employee found to have abused the company`s system.
A biometric key
The civil ID and PC/networked access would be the leading biometric applications over the next five years, White said.
Biometrics has emerged as a worldwide identification and verification solution, with large-scale deployments under way in countries including SA, Malaysia, Chile and the US, he said.
A market report revealed that biometrics revenues attributed to PC/networked access are expected to grow at a rapid pace over the next two years, White said, driven by the increased awareness of employee authentication levels at the enterprise level.
"Password management is currently a significant cost factor that can be reduced significantly through the use of biometrics instead of passwords, with the added benefit of elevating the level of security."
Asked about how easy is it to fake fingerprints, White said: "I`ve heard that communications systems company Sagem is currently testing what they call 'dead finger detection` but I do not see the possibility of anyone faking a fingerprint."
Share
