Michael Vatis, director of the US National Infrastructure Protection Centre (NIPC) recently attended the World E-commerce Forum in London and stated that the threat of crime using the internet was real and growing.
Vatis called for closer co-operation between businesses and governments to work against the threat of cybercrime. Even though he stated that the internet provided many new and good opportunities, the down side is that anyone can gain access to a system from anywhere in the world.
Tools used for cybercrime are becoming increasingly sophisticated and anyone on the internet can obtain access to them. Many attacks made on businesses appear to be made by disgruntled ex-employees, or hackers and those that write viruses.
Security has to be the responsibility of the company and they have to ensure that they have the best systems in place to start combatting cybercrime. Many organisations are now developing more sophisticated security systems to deal with this problem and they are available on the market, however Vatis still warns that there is a long way to go.
The UK government announced in July that they would be setting up an agency to deal with cybercrime and they are expected to start work around April 2001. This project will be co-ordinated with Customs and Excise, the National Criminal Intelligence Unit and National Crime Squad.
