CIFAS statistics show the ugly face of identity theft

Looking at the latest statistics from CIFAS (the UK's fraud prevention service) we see a scary and ugly truth: Identify theft – which can happen to any of us! - has soared to 74 per cent in the first six months of the year!

This increase is still surprising, although the activities of criminal gangs on the so-called carder forums - where criminals buy and sell cardholder-related data - which we reported - in April 2008. You can read more on this trend in our Q1 2008 security trends report, where we explain how crimeware-as-a-service (or CaaS for short) works in cybercrime economy.

That CaaS is not a passing fad, was confirmed last week at the Information Security Forum. ISF pointed out that Caas is not only a continuing threat, but will quite likely continue to be a threat for at least the next couple of years.

We see the rise in identity theft stemming from both increasing criminal activity on the CaaS front, as well as failure by companies and individuals alike to protect their confidential and valuable data adequately.

Companies can protect employee and company financial data by installing a web security solution that protects all inbound and outbound traffic in real time. Any unusual, undesirable, suspicious or malicious web content must be detected and blocked to prevent data theft.

But first and foremost – web security starts at home. Staff education and training is an essential building block in the IT security wall of any organization!