Most criminal offences committed using the Internet are in fact traditional offences, enhanced by the cyber environment as a delivery and communication tool. For example, there has been a massive increase in extortion demands aimed at online betting and gaming industry, using the threat of jamming their systems with 'Botnets' as leverage. However, we are also seeing the emergence of new crimes such as hacking and cyber auction frauds involving companies such as E-bay, at a pace which legislation and regulation is simply too slow to catch up.
Exacerbated by the current global economic crisis, there are a number of emerging and expanding trends, including advanced web threats, phishing (particularly for social network username accounts), browser or plug-in vulnerabilities, new malware variants and families of threats, as well as fake security and utility programmes, known as "scareware".
The CIA predicts that criminal and terrorist networks will make use of their wealth and newly found expertise to penetrate global financial and computer networks. In particular, our increasing dependency on information technology to manage and operate critical national infrastructures provides a prime target to would be cyber-terrorists.
The global nature of cyber crime creates unique multi-jurisdictional challenges around who reports the crime, who investigates it and who prosecutes it. In addition there are large intelligence gaps at national and international levels and it will require significant investment in e-security to stay ahead of the curve.
The increasing sophistication of Internet crime means that businesses need to effectively safeguard and defend their mission-critical systems. Maintaining the knowledge, tools, and techniques to manage this security strategy requires dedicated internal resources that many businesses do not have, or do not wish to possess.
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