Reacting to a new report from the EU Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) – which claims there are around 3,600 organised crime groups active in the European Union – AhnLab says that it is important to understand that the Internet has become a primary communications medium for these new breed of criminals.
Brian Laing, vice president of AhnLab - South Korea’s largest IT security vendor - says that the seven main categories of crime identified in the new report include three which are linked with the Internet – counterfeit goods, missing trader (VAT) fraud and money laundering – as well as the problem of cybercrime itself, which is almost wholly Internet-related.
“More than anything, the fact that three crime categories identified by the EU SOCTA report are now linked with the Internet, shows how pervasive the Net has become in modern society,” he said.
“The good news, however, is that, just as criminals are using the Internet to help them carry out their frauds and crimes, so companies and end users can tap the same resource to help them defend against these problems,” he added.
The AhnLab vice president went on to say that AV software and mobile security technologies, as well a online transaction security systems, all use the Internet to update their resources, whilst multi-dimensional threat analysis, endpoint protection and network appliances can also benefit from tapping the power of the Internet.
It is interesting, he says, to note that the report has identified the emergence of new criminal phenomena, many of which are linked to the current economic crisis and the Internet.
“As this report concludes, these new developments are changing the nature of organised crime towards a model based around a networked community,” he said, adding that, since the organised crime groups are capable of operating in multiple countries and criminal sectors, so the forces fighting them need to tap the power of the Internet in the same way.
“The fact that criminals are now – as this report states – moving into the counterfeiting of mainstream consumer goods, including foods and medical products, means that their profit margins are becoming reduced,” he said.
“Add in the conclusion of the report, namely that the Internet has become a major driver of criminal activity, enabling organised crime groups to access a large pool of victims, obscure their activities and carry out a diverse range of criminal acts in a shorter period of time - and on a much larger scale than ever before – and it is clear we, as an IT security industry, need to do a lot more than we are doing at the moment to fight crime,” he added