Support for national e-crime protection body a welcome step in tackling the problem of IT crime which will take some time to implement and shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for strong encryption as a preventative measure according to PGP.
The British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) has published its latest findings on business crime – revealing that 74% of businesses believe that a central or national body should be set up to deal with e-crime. The study also found that although 24% of businesses have had data stolen or compromised, only 11% use encryption to protect their data.Jamie Cowper, Director of Marketing EMEA at PGP Corporation, has made the following comments: “While we applaud the BCC’s call for a dedicated e-crime unit, this in itself isn’t an overnight, cure-all solution to cybercrime. Businesses continue to secure the network perimeter and lock down hardware, but truly safeguarding data requires ongoing, proactive measures – not just the one-off, online equivalent of putting an alarm on the side of the office. Locks can be broken and networks can be breached, but with such a low percentage of UK businesses actively deploying encryption, it’s clear that the importance of defending the data itself still hasn’t sunk in. While an e-crime unit can certainly help, it’s unrealistic to expect a dedicated ‘e-bobby’ for every computer in every home and business. Rather than waiting for the introduction of an online police force, organisations should be actively deploying enterprise-wide encryption to ensure that their security policies are always one step ahead of the cybercriminals.”
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