Cybercriminals hit two-thirds of UK firms

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has said that two thirds of its members suffered a serious cybercrime attack in the past year.

According to a report published by the CBI, hacking, virus attacks and credit card fraud were listed as the main types of serious cybercrime that had affected businesses.

The survey found that only around a tenth of the attacks came from current employees. The main threat now stems from external hackers (45 per cent), while former employees and organised crime both notched up 13 per cent.

Digby Jones, director general of the CBI, said: "This survey clearly shows that fears about potential financial losses and damage to reputation from cybercrime are stalling the growth of ebusiness, especially for business-to-consumer [B2C] transactions."

While only 32 per cent of the 148 respondents believe B2C transactions are safe, they are more confident about business-to-business transactions, with 53 per cent saying they are safe.

The CBI study suggests that cybercrime is stopping small to medium sized enterprises from developing ebusiness operations because of fears that they may suffer damage to their reputation through adverse publicity.

Firms aren't too worried about direct financial loss, which they say remains "negligible".

Alongside the report, the CBI has called on the Government to extend the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 to cover attacks that cause IT systems to fail.

The group also wants the creation of a UK Centre for Cybercrime Complaints similar to the US Internet Fraud Complaint Centre. This would hold a database of web-based fraud from which complaints could be channelled to the relevant investigating bodies.