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Cybercriminals terrorise UK firms.

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorHayward, Cathy
PositionBrief Article

UK firms fear hackers are a serious threat to their future.

A third of the UK'S largest companies and public-sector organisations have been victims of hacking over the past year, according to a report by the Communications Management Association (CMA). Hackers raided bank accounts, stole information, grafittied sites, crashed networks, blanked computer chips, and were responsible for tax evasion, investment fraud, credit card fraud, sales fraud and thousands' of pounds of damage.

Many of the victims were well-known firms such as Lloyd's of London, HSBC and Abbey National. Deri Jones, head of internet security firm NTA Monitor, said the security of the government's internet service is a shambles.

Cybercrime was seen as a threat to over 60 per cent of firms, with almost half believing the future survival of their organisations would be put at risk by a serious network breach. And firms are ill-prepared to cope with the problem. Half had not invested enough in the security skills of their own staff and most would be unlikely to pursue criminal convictions in the courts because they would not want to risk their corporate reputation.

The report follows a comment by Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, that hacking could cripple the UK faster than a military attack, because computers run the country's infrastructure from water and power to transport.

Dave Duke, founder of Cryptic Software, which recently launched the anti-hacking tool Cybersight, blamed the increase in hacking on internal...

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