A serious spate of security concerns?

Jonathan Bowers, July 25th 2006, 9:46AM

The technology headlines are dominated this week by security issues. Specifically in the UK, the government has produced guidelines to educate on the issue of cyber-bullying while globally the latest Sophos report reveals that Asian spammers are more now prevalent that US spammers for the first time ever.

The anti-virus companies are of course riding high on the reports. Symantec has teamed up with Yahoo to reach more users with its Norton software and Kaspersky labs is adding heat by warning us that malware is getting more sophisticated.

I think it is great that the government sees better technology education as a step to avoiding Internet crimes but I am often dubious when reports come out that are generated by the firms gaining the most from our heightened concerns. Often with no firm statistical evidence we are asked to accept that we are in more danger than ever before.

A quick search shows that we may be moving in this direction - the US Department of Justice is currently creating an extensive Cyber Crime survey to assess the impact on US businesses. It would be nice to see the UK government taking similar steps for the 1,500,000 businesses online in this country, not to mention the millions of home users.

Tags: cybercrime, security, spam