Brits say Cybercrime costs billions

Cybercrime is leeching U.K. economy of a terrifying 27 billion pounds (43.5 billion) per year, according to new estimates published by the Government.

The headline number to put out by the Office of Cyber Security & information assurance and consultancy Detica includes a cost of £ 21 billion to the business, the results of 9.2 billion pounds by the theft of intellectual property (IP) and 7.6 billion pounds from industrial espionage.

Extortion against U.K. company accounts for another 2.2 billion pounds, the loss of customer data 1 billion pounds, with £ 2.2 billion in tax evasion ' transferred ' against the Government itself.

Cyberfraud conventional against ordinary citizens is considered to be 3.1 billion pounds in total, comprising £ 1.7 billion from identity theft and another 1.4 billion pounds from online scams. Fake anti-virus scams only accounts for 30 million pounds of useless software sold to the public.

"Estimates of the cost of cybercrime so far are not able to provide a defensible estimate the economic impact and have failed to address the extent of the problem," say the authors of the report, dry.

Skeptics--and there will be some--will point to the rather vague, methodology used to calculate these figures but there is no doubt that cybercrime is still a phenomenon was born. Put a figure on it is inherently difficult, not helped by underreporting, and ignorance of the organizations that don't necessarily realize that have suffered.

To summarize, the Internet has proved to have some big downsides don't underestimate the pathetic aiute of importance of the protection from powerful technology companies over the last decade. Low adhesion to orthodoxy regulation that defined the last quarter century, Governments've twiddled their thumbs as all expanse. Until now.

Symantec, meanwhile, has produced a very low citizen cybercrime figure of 1.9 billion pounds per year--a huge discrepancy in the amounts to be estimated. A key theme of the study is that cybersecurity is the protection of businesses and citizens, not just the Government itself. Until now formally recognize this has taken the decision makers.