By Pia Heikkila, 8 June 2000 15:54
NEWS Ninety per cent of US companies have experienced Internet fraud last year, according to study published by the FBI and the US Computer Security Institute. As a reaction to the report, Stephen Philippsohn, Internet fraud expert at legal firm Phillippsohn Crawfords Berwald said although official figures in the UK are not available, UK companies are not as aware of electronic fraud as their US counterparts. However, according to Philippsohn's estimation 70 to 80 per cent of UK companies are subject to cybercrime. Philippsohn told silicon.com that the most significant crime affecting UK companies is the internal theft of information. "Electronic resources make theft easier for a company insider to steal vital information and sell it to a competitor," he said. Phillipsohn insisted time is crucial when dealing with cybercrime: "Because virtual fraud is so much easier and quicker to do, companies must respond to the crime as quickly as possible. One way to prevent internal information theft is to check every employee's backgrounds - even independent contractors," he warns. The types of frauds examined in the US report were Internal and external hacking, netspionage and sabotage.
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