Case Studies

Crime stats latest

by Mark Rowe

The UK has an estimated 5.1 million incidents of fraud a year, with 3.8 million adult victims in England and Wales according to the latest official crime statistics.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) admits to growing concern that the official statistics on crime in England and Wales have not adequately captured the scale of fraud. There has been debate about whether or not levels of fraud and cyber crime experienced by the household population have been increasing, and if so have they risen to such a degree to make up for the long term falls in traditional types of crime. As shown in Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimates, crime is down from 19 million at its peak in 1995 to under seven million offences in the year ending June 2015. It has been argued that crime has not actually fallen, but changed, moving to newer forms of crime not captured by the survey measurement. The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) showed that, for the offences it covers, there were an estimated 6.5 million incidents of crime against households and resident adults (aged 16 and over). This is a eight per cent decrease compared with the previous year’s survey, and the lowest estimate since the CSEW began in 1981.

Hence demand for more comprehensive statistics. The ONS is doing work to extend the main victimisation module in the CSEW to cover fraud and elements of cyber-crime experienced by the population resident in households. New questions will be added to the survey from October 2015 and results from a field trial, based on those questions, are now available. It should be noted that these statistics are research outputs and not official statistics. Previously the ONS calculated a crude estimate of the possible scale of plastic card and banking fraud and that adding new questions to the victimisation module would be likely to yield between 3.6 and 3.8 million more incidents. The new questions extend beyond plastic card and banking fraud to cover a fuller spectrum of fraud and computer misuse crimes, including those committed in person, by mail, over the phone and online. They also encompass a range of harm or loss, including incidents where the victim suffered no or little loss or harm, cases where losses were reimbursed by others (such as bank or credit card company) and cases where significant harm or loss was experienced.

Initial estimates

To develop the new questions a large-scale field trial was carried out between May and August 2015. Preliminary results from this field trial indicate that just over half of those 5.1 million incidents involved some initial financial loss to the victim, and includes those who subsequently received compensation in part or full. And where a loss was reported, three-quarters (78pc) of the victims received some form of financial compensation, and in well over half (62pc) they were reimbursed in full. Besides fraud, the field trial estimated there were 2.5 million incidents of crime falling under the Computer Misuse Act, the most common incident where the victim’s computer or other internet enabled device was infected by a virus; it also included incidents where the respondent’s email or social media accounts had been hacked.

The CSEW saw an increase of 9pc in the volume of fraud offences referred to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) at the City of London Police. Nearly 600,000 offences were referred to NFIB, including 237,494 offences reported by victims to Action Fraud (the UK’s national fraud reporting centre), 266,701 referrals from Cifas (a UK-wide fraud prevention trade body) and 95,489 cases from FFA UK (a UK payments industry trade body).

For the stats in full visit http://www.ons.gov.uk/.

Comments

Louise Bulman, VP EMEA at IT security product company Vormetric said: that the numbers highlighted by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed the scale of the nation’s cybercrime problem for the first time.

She said: “It is estimated that an enormous 2.5 million cybercrime offences have taken place – but this might just be the tip of the iceberg. We only need to look back on the litany of data breaches that have taken place indiscriminately the past year to know how adept today’s hackers are at hiding their tracks and how long it takes for data breaches to come to light.

“Data is a valuable currency – and the bad guys are becoming more proficient in their quest to steal it. For businesses, this has greatly increased the risk of reputational damage and requires an urgent step change in current data security policies, particularly as consumers are rapidly losing patience with those who cannot protect their private information effectively. Looking ahead, if efforts are not made to stem the tide once and for all, these numbers will only continue to climb in the coming years.

“True data security requires a combination of technologies to reduce the attack surface available – limiting the ‘who, what, when, where and how’ of data access, and keeping a careful eye on those with a legitimate need to access it by monitoring their data access patterns for behaviour that may indicate an attack in progress. In the past, organisations only encrypted for protection what they were forced to protect by compliance requirements. Fortunately, advances in technology mean that it is now faster and easier to secure more data with encryption than ever before – and it can be applied to wherever the data resides. Ultimately, for companies serious about safeguarding customer data and, by proxy, their own intellectual property, then adopting a default strategy of ‘encrypt everything’ is quickly becoming the only reasonable way to retain, and maintain, the upper-hand in the fight against cybercrime and keep fraud at a respectable level.”

And Mark Stollery, Managing Consultant, Enterprise and Cyber Security UK and Ireland, Fujitsu, pointed also to recent global threats such as the Dridex malware, used to steal millions of pounds from UK bank accounts – as highlighting the increasing presence of cyber-criminals; and the importance for organisations and governments to continue to collaborate to prevent data losses and keep these cyber-criminals out.

“A recent survey showed the true scale of the issue with nearly 9 out of 10 large organisations surveyed suffering some sort of cyber security breach, with the impact equally as significant on smaller organisations with far fewer resources and levels of protection. Organisations must make security a top priority if they are to combat threats – which we can only expect to evolve in sophistication as cyber-criminals continually strive to outpace the security vendors and community. This means an ongoing programme of education – for users, employees and across the supply chain – to ensure they are not introducing potential risk and malicious activity to the network; alongside a strong security posture in order to protect the most important data assets. Today’s news reinforces the impact cyber-crime is having on businesses at all levels and in all sectors. There have been a significant numbers of breaches in 2015 and this strengthens the message to organisations of ‘when and not if’ such an incident will occur – be prepared, act today to protect your data and then don’t stop.”

About the CSEW

The CSEW is a face-to-face victimisation survey in which people resident in households in England and Wales are asked about their experiences of a selected number of offences in the 12 months prior to the interview. It covers both children aged ten to 15 and adults aged 16 and over, but does not cover those living in group residences (such as care homes, student halls of residence and prisons), or crimes against commercial or public sector bodies.

Pictured: Edmonton police station, north east London.

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