Business intelligence leaks going largely unreported

A growing culture of businesses neglecting to report cyber crime over fears of reputation damage could put many more firms out of business, Europol’s Cybercrime Centre warns.

LONDON - November 20, 2014.

The head of the Centre, Troels Oerting, says all businesses are likely to be affected by cyber crime sooner or later as online coverage continues to spread across the globe.

Companies that believe business information security isn't important should check again or end up going bust, he says, adding that such attacks are now a normal part of business.

The Centre says so much of the financial data and company records being stolen by cyber crime gangs never makes the news because businesses fail to report breaches.

It found that cyber crime and losses through business fraud valued at more than €9m, monthly, is going unreported to avoid reputation damage and because of a perception by those businesses that reporting cyber crime will make no difference.

The Centre's solution is an imminent directive on network and information security (NIS) that will oblige firms to report security breaches, with the added benefit to shareholders of being informed when a businesses’intellectual property has been stolen.

Consequently, the amount of company data on cyber crime will grow as reports and investigations are filed under the new rules, and more business sectors share information about data breaches beyond financial institutions, which have been working together in this area for some time.

They hope it could also form part of companies' corporate social responsibility programmes as well as disrupting cyber crime gangs' infrastructure.

Industrialised and services-based cyber crime activity would therefore become riskier and less attractive to instigate at a time it is becoming increasingly commercialised.

Large corporates - especially in the financial services arena - often possess the resources necessary to protect their data while medium-sized and small companies struggle, where investment in IT infrastructure can't be directly translated into revenue.

One of the biggest security oversights by SME businesses is thinking they are too small to be of interest to cyber criminals, but they're wrong, Europol’s Cybercrime Centre says.

Business data is increasingly being gathered by all sizes of companies - from financial records to company accounts - before users' personal information is accounted for.

People hand over their data to businesses expecting it to be protected, the Centre warns, so firms should take their responsibilities to them with the expected level of security.

Presswire

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