Thursday 5 April 2012

EU Cracks Down on Cybercrime

European Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström
Here at SumRando, we joke that internet users are like students walking into a quiz they forgot to study for. Except in our world, hackers pass out the questions and the flunkies are governments and multinational corporations.

Fortunately, the European Union has decided to start studying.

On Thursday, the European Commission announced a new Cybercrime Center that will work with Europol to address the escalating damage of cybercrime.

According to the website of Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Home Affairs, who announced the Center:

The centre will be the European focal point in fighting cybercrime and will focus on illegal online activities carried out by organised crime groups, particularly those generating large criminal profits, such as online fraud involving credit cards and bank credentials. The EU experts will also work on preventing cybercrimes affecting e-banking and online booking activities, thus increasing e-consumers trust. A focus of the European Cybercrime Centre will be to protect social network profiles from e-crime infiltration and will help the fight against online identity theft. It will also focus on cybercrimes which cause serious harm to their victims, such as online child sexual exploitation and cyber-attacks affecting critical infrastructure and information systems in the Union. [EC]

As it currently stands, each EU member country has different laws pertaining to cybersecurity and cybercrime – making the process of addressing and prosecuting offenders difficult. According to Malmström, the new center will pull together experts across the EU for collaboration and a streamlined approach to prevention and enforcement.
 
And if you still don’t think it’s time to look at your online protection, consider these facts provided by Ms. Malmström:

  •          The total cost of cybercrime worldwide is estimated at $388 billion.
  •          Nearly 600,000 Facebook accounts are blocked daily after hacking attempts.
  •          Every day, more than 1 million people become victims of cybercrime.
  •          In 2009 over 6,700,000 bot-infected computers were detected.

Ms. Malmström's website and press conference can be found here.

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