The Costs of High Tech Crime

Recent studies and surveys have identified that financially motivated technology enabled crime cases are of considerable concern to business and industry. A survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (2006) on behalf of the UK Department of Trade and Industry reported that information security breaches cost UK companies across several industry sectors GBP10 billion per annum. This information sheet discusses the results of the independent 2006 AusCERT (2006) survey which also raises similar concerns. Based on a relatively small number of public and private organisations in Australia, survey results over the previous four years indicated that computer facilitated financial fraud, laptop theft, and infections from viruses and worms are seen as the major sources of financial losses. In the survey, although infections from viruses and worms were the most common form of electronic attack reported, the financial loss attributed to laptop theft was higher than that attributed to infections from viruses and worms.