Computer related crime is growing much faster than we realise
If the trend in South Africa follows that of the rest of the world, the proceeds of cyber crime are outstripping that of the drug trade. In 2005, white collar crime in South Africa was reported by Business Against Crime as running in excess of R40 billion a year. If the South African trends follow that of the rest of the world, we can safely assume that cyber criminals are responsible for a sizeable portion of that.
Leading computer anti-virus company McAfee's CEO David DeWalt said recently that cyber crime had become a US$105 billion business that now surpassed the value of the illegal drug trade worldwide. He said many companies continue to underestimate the threat from phishing, data loss, cyber identity theft, information leakage and other cyber vulnerabilities.
Worldwide computer-related crime is one of the fastest growing forms of crime. The fact that it is very much alive and well in South Africa is evidenced by the fact that tens of thousands of South Africans receive weekly e-mails from phishing sites purporting to be from the big four banks asking them to disclose sensitive details such as their account details and passwords.
There was a strong suspicion that many of the phishing operators were part of the Nigerian 419 scam that has been defrauding unsuspecting punters for many years. It's amazing how low the awareness is of cyber security threats among corporate South Africa and government and how little is being done to safeguard networks, servers and PCs on networks. The majority of users still believe that an anti-virus programme offers sufficient protection.
As the world has become a smaller place thanks to the internet and other emerging technologies, we've seen a significant amount of emerging threats from increasingly sophisticated groups attacking networks around the world.
The emergence of new platforms and devices present cyber criminals with new opportunities for hacks and phishing scams. Mobile devices such as smartphones and voice-over-IP systems were inherently more vulnerable than traditional clients and telephony services.
Despite efforts to tighten up the legal framework to deal with cyber criminals, a petty thief is still more likely to serve a longer sentence than the CEO of a major corporate who has defrauded his company of tens of millions of rands. The cross-border sophistication in tracking and arresting cyber criminals is just not there.
Wolfgang Selzer is head of the ICT security division at Exponant (www.exponant.com).
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