UK loses £27bn to cyber crime

Xhead = UK loses £27bn to cyber crime

Cyber crime is costing the UK an estimated £27 billion a year, and UK businesses are hit hardest owing to high levels of intellectual property theft and industrial espionage, according to a new report from consultancy Detica and the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance, notes V3.co.uk.

The study found the cost to businesses of cyber crime runs to at least £2 billion a year, and intellectual property theft accounts for the largest chunk at £9.2 billion, followed by industrial espionage at £7.6 billion and extortion at £2.2 billion.

Direct online theft accounts for just £1.3 billion, while loss or theft of customer data represents just £1.1 billion, despite usually garnering the biggest headlines.

The US federal government is a step closer to adopting a cloud-first policy with the publication of a new report, writes Computing.co.uk.

The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy outlines how government agencies should evaluate which parts of their work could be supported by cloud computing.

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra said: "The adoption of cloud computing will play a pivotal role in helping the government close the productivity gap between the public and private sectors."

Facebook yesterday added civil unions and domestic partnerships to the list of relationships that its users can pick from to best describe their romantic status, reveals the Associated Press.

The world's largest online social network also gives its users the option to list themselves as single, married, in an open relationship or “it's complicated”, among others.

The option for civil unions or domestic partnerships is only available to Facebook users in the US, Canada, the UK, France and Australia, said the non-profit Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which has been among the groups working with Facebook to add the options.

Web-based e-mail, social networking and peer-to-peer services are frustrating law enforcement wiretapping efforts, a lawyer for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) told lawmakers yesterday, but she did not offer concrete ideas on how to fix the problem, states PC World.

President Barack Obama's administration is debating ways to deal with Web-based services not covered by traditional wiretap laws, including incentives for companies to build in surveillance capabilities, said Valerie Caproni, general counsel at the FBI.

Many Internet services are not covered by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which requires traditional telecom carriers to allow law enforcement agencies real-time access to communications after a court has issued a wiretap order, she explained.