The usual suspects
According to a report issued by the Office of Cyber Security, the overall cost to the UK economy from cyber crime is twenty seven billion pounds per year. Eliminate that crime and we could eliminate our national debt within a matter of years.
According to the Office of Cyber Security, that £27 billion, or around £10,000 per UK business per year, includes £9.2bn from the theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, £7.6bn from industrial espionage, £2.2bn of extortion by criminal gangs, £1.3bn of online theft, and £1bn due to the theft of customer data. Within the category of intellectual property theft, the sector hardest hit is pharmaceuticals, closely followed by the electronics sector, and then the software industry.
I believe security should be taken very seriously, but I have to question some of these numbers. It should be noted that the OCS has no actual evidence for these figures. Instead, it says "Our assessments are necessarily based on assumptions and informed judgements rather than specific examples of cyber crime". Whilst based on assumptions, figures like this tend to be quoted as gospel by newspapers, politicians and anyone with an agenda. The report also leaves it unclear who is committing these cyber crimes, whether it is organised criminal gangs or white collar staff.
Even more surprising is that the government has an Office of Cyber Security. We don't have a government Office of Car Crime, or an Office of White Collar Crime, and we don't see reports about how much these cost the UK economy, so why do we single out cyber crime? Reading this report, one has to wonder how much of it is scary numbers to justify its own existence.
www.skillzone.net/shortcut/nl38cybercrime
28th February 2011