Businesses should take more responsibility for protecting individuals against cyber crime and safeguarding their customers’ data, says a new report published by the House of Lords.
The proposal, published by the House of Lords science and technology committee, argued that businesses should be penalised if they fail to protect individuals from internet crime.
The report calls for an introduction of an online e-crime reporting system, the creation of security breach notification laws and enforcing measures that may hold IT security vendors responsible for any breaches in security.
While the amount of internet crime is hard to measure, a recent survey of over 1400 businesses, conducted by McAfee and analyst firm Datamonitor, found that 30% of businesses believe that a major security breach could put them out of business, while half estimated it would cost in excess of £50,000 to notify customers of a data breach that exposed personal information.
Lord Broers, chairman of the committee, said: “We feel many of the organisations profiting from internet services now need to take their share of the responsibility. That includes the IT industry and the software vendors, the banks and internet traders, and the internet service providers.”
However, the government is also being pushed to do more to protect businesses from internet threats. Lord Broers added: “Even quite sophisticated internet users are relatively helpless at the hands of the experts that are out there to get them.”
“It is definitely time for the government to do more to protect against e-crime.”
© Crimson Business Ltd. 2007
