These days, it’s easier to hack into someone’s computer and nick 10 grand from someone’s online bank account than it is to smash someone’s door down and run off with their telly – even one of those fancy flatscreens.
MPs have now warned that Britain is ‘wide open to a cyber crime invasion’. According to the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Keith Vaz, there is too little funding to tackle the likes of credit card fraud, identity theft, industrial espionage and online child exploitation.
Setting up a proper defence against this kind of activity takes a lot of money and time – Britain has very little of the former sloshing about and nobody ever has enough of the latter.
Yet despite the need to improve our cyber defence, Adrian Leppard, of the City of London Police, has warned that a quarter of the 800 Internet crime officers could be axed due to cuts. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is also having its budget slashed by 10%.
The world has gone mad!