It's not all credit card theft in the cyber-crime world...

There is a perceived wisdom these days that, apart from the odd government sponsored attack, that almost all computer crime these days is financially focussed and aimed at getting hold of credit card data or bank details. While it’s true that there certainly is a lot of this about, and it has a high visibility in the security industry due to regulations such as PCI, and the banks’ intense (and necessary) focus on security, it’s not the whole story.

The UK Government has today published a rather interesting report into the costs of cyber-crime. There are some good statistics in it (these exclude copyright theft such as peer-to-peer sharing):

-      The cost to UK industry is £21B annually, out of a total UK cost of £27B.

-      The largest costs are for Intellectual Property Theft and Espionage at £9B and £7B respectively.

The more detailed IP theft numbers are worth a closer look – they show the sectors with the greatest costs are the IP-rich ones: Biotech & Pharmaceuticals, Electronics, IT and Chemicals, all at over £1B per annum. Obvious when you think about it, but a very different set of targets to the financial services ones we traditionally think about.

The full report is only 8 pages and is worth a look – it’s available at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/cost-of-cyber-crime.