WiTT’s October meeting took place on the 1st, at IBM UK.
In the recent past, cybercrime — computer viruses; denial-of-service attacks; malware; cyberstalking; fraud and identity theft; phishing scams — was often directed at individuals or corporations. Last year, the estimated annual cost of cybercrime to the UK was £27 billion.
In a public speech in June of this year, however, MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans said that cybersecurity ranks alongside terrorism as one of the United Kingdom’s most pressing security challenges. “What is at stake is not just our government secrets but also the safety and security of our infrastructure, the intellectual property that underpins our future prosperity, and the commercially sensitive information that is the lifeblood of our companies and corporations,” Evans said.
In July, General Keith B. Alexander, who heads the National Security Agency and also the newly-created United States Cyber Command, said that there had been a 17-fold increase in computer attacks on American infrastructure between 2009 and 2011, initiated by criminal gangs, hackers and other nations.
There’s no question that the threat of cybercrime is growing, and that the focus and scale of cybercrime are shifting. For our meeting of 1 October, Women in Telecoms & Technology has assembled an expert panel of speakers to examine the growing threat of cybercrime, and discuss how individuals, companies, and governments can improve cybersecurity. Our panel included:
Andrew Archibald, Deputy Director of Cyber at SOCA;
Joanne Taylor, Director of Public Security, SAS;
Mark Palmer, Vice President for Defence Industry Europe, IBM; and
Robert Hayes, Director (UK) & Senior Fellow, The Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.
