Thanks to a ‘comprehensive failure of imagination by industry, law enforcement and government’, honest citizens are exposed to predatory cyber crime, it’s claimed. In a 16-page report, the Fraud Advisory Panel points to a society-wide failure to properly prepare for the next generation of cybercriminals – who will be armed with artificial intelligence (AI), big-data analytics and crypto-currencies. It risks a crippling new epidemic of economic crime. So warns the Panel in its new report, Fraud futures: understanding the old to prepare for the new.
Fraud is as old as human society. New technologies – from writing to railways – have always empowered the criminal. So why are we still so bad at making our great innovations – like the internet – secure from criminal abuse? Reviewing the internet-driven explosion in fraud and cybercrime over the last 20 years, the Panel notes that technology companies give little thought to the crime and security consequences of their inventions; politicians are too slow to grasp the policy implications while continuing to cut defensive budgets; businesses launch new services without considering the customer risks they create. All have helped create a paradise for the fraudster and the cyber-criminal.
The report includes half a dozen contributions by futurologists. They paint an ominous picture of a potent new wave of cybercrime enabled by next generation technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and big-data analytics.
Quoting expert warnings that standard password security advice makes no sense in a home with hundreds of networked devices (the so-called Internet of Things), the report characterises the government response to date as ‘too little, too late’. The Panel, a charity, calls (again) for security to be an obligatory part of development and certification so that new technologies have strong security designed-in from the very beginning.
David Kirk, chairman of the Fraud Advisory Panel, said: “The present explosion of fraud and cybercrime is not an act of nature, it is the result of choices made at the highest levels in modern society. The internet and the smartphone have been allowed to expose honest citizens to predatory crime on a massive scale while simultaneously their protectors in the criminal justice system have been hobbled. Must we repeatedly re-live this catastrophe? If we do not learn from our past mistakes much worse is to come. New technologies are creating exciting new opportunities for all of us to live, work and play in a new world. As well as making sure that they are widely exploited for the greater good we must ensure that they are much more resistant to abuse by the bad.”
For all the talk of how blockchain, AI and other cyber things can help people, the report ended with Future of Humanity Institute report, from Oxford, on ‘Malicious AI‘, that ‘reminds us that new technologies like AI and robotics will also free the fraudster (and the organised criminal and the terrorist) from their human limitations. These are unimaginably powerful tools. Their misuse will make life very miserable for some, possibly for many. Voluntary codes of conduct, updated password advice and market-led solutions have served us poorly in fighting the present incarnation of cybercrime. They won’t be anything like enough to stop the next one either. Fraud fighters of today and tomorrow must learn from the past if we are to anticipate the future.’
The occasion for the report is the 20th anniversary of the Panel, marked by a drinks reception and black tie dinner at Vintners’ Hall in central London, with Baroness Newlove, Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales as speaker. Earlier, Oliver Shaw, trustee and detective superintendent with the City of London Police, launched the report at the Panel AGM. Dr Nicola Millard, customer experience futurologist, BT and one of the report contributors, was among other speakers in London.
Visit https://www.fraudadvisorypanel.org/.
