Your IndustryFeb 8 2013

Cyber fraud a growing threat

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Speaking today (8 February) at Financial Adviser’s cyber security seminar, Mr Stupples, professor of systems and cryptography at City University London, said anyone involved in financial services needs to be aware of the growing threat of cyber crime.

However, he added that how much money one should spend on security, is a difficult question to answer.

Mr Stupples explained: “One of the things that we started to look at here at the university is that if there are viruses and worms, how much money should you spend on security.

“Because you could just carry on putting more and more money into it and you are still going to be affected and still lose money.”

He continued: “What we are trying to do at the moment is come up with some sort of compromise and say that this is the amount of money that you do need to spend on security, but you are going to lose money as well, because there is no real way that you can protect forever.

“Sooner or later, people are going to find a way into your computer systems and either steal data or cause damage.”

Discussing the ways that cybercrime damage can affect businesses, Mr Stupples said that it can cause share price manipulation, denial of service, customer data theft, intellectual property theft and cause reputational damage.