New polymer tenners, brought out in September. For counterfeit educational materials visit the ‘banknotes’ part of the website www. bankofengland.co.uk More details The IOCTA was presented during the annual Europol-Interpol Cybercrime Conference, in late September in The Hague. To read the 80-page report visit https://www. europol.europa.eu/ iocta/2017/index.html. p 50 Aimed at cash-handling businesses it seeks to promote banknote checking at point of sale; and to reduce the number of counterfeit notes being accepted and thus reduce losses. Any retailer or business can sign up as a supporter by pledging their support annually to a set of six guiding principles. The scheme encourages note checking tailored to type of business. Supporters will have access to advice and training materials: leaflets, posters, online computer-based training and webinars, plus updates on topics such as the issue of new-style banknotes and withdrawal of oldstyle notes. The Bank has worked with the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS), British Retail Consortium (BRC), Crimestoppers, Going after cybercriminals ‘not viable’ A Home Office official has given the clearest admission yet that cybercriminals outside the UK doing cyber-crimes in the UK are in effect beyond the law. Richard Riley, director for serious and organised crime at the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, told the ATM and cyber security conference in London on October 10 that chasing fraudsters across the world to bring criminal justice interventions against them was ‘not viable’, ‘given the volume of crimes being perpetrated’. He said that £130m in UK bank accounts was frozen, that should belong to UK victims of fraud. Funds repatriation Global attacks The past 12 months have seen a number of unprecedented cyberattacks in terms of their global scale, impact and rate of spread, according to the European Union’s policing agency Europol. Its 2017 Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) assesses emerging threats in cybercrime. Ransomware is the top threat facing computer users; highprofile attacks such as WannaCry hit millions of devices. Some attacks have affected critical national infrastructures at levels that could endanger lives. p NOVEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY National Crime Agency (NCA), National Pubwatch, Petrol Retailers Association (PRA) and Retailers Against Crime (RAC). Victoria Cleland, Chief Cashier at the Bank, said: “Retailers and other businesses are the front line of defence against counterfeiting. Counterfeit banknotes are only produced because criminals believe they will find somewhere to spend them and can do so without consequence. Don’t let counterfeit banknotes be a cost to your business, your customers or your reputation.” The Bank of England points to making its notes more resilient against counterfeiting by printing the £5 and £10 notes on polymer. Although relatively rare, any counterfeit note is worthless, the Bank points out. p he listed as one of five key areas that Government ministers want the joint fraud taskforce, launched by then Home Secretary Theresa May in February 2016, to concentrate on; the others are law enforcement response; campaigns and awareness-raising; card not present fraud; and victims and vulnerability. He quoted the police view that ‘we will not arrest our way out of this issue’; and hence it will take the help of industry to design out cyber-crimes in the first place. He was lukewarm about an ad campaign on cyber, on the lines of famed 1970s adverts such as wearing seat belts in cars, arguing that big TV audiences are not around as they were then. He summed up: “We have made a start; there is much more to do.” p Stolen vehicles on rise The number of vehicles stolen has risen by nearly a third in the past three years, according to an insurer. One in three are stolen in London. RAC Insurance director Mark Godfrey said advances in immobilisers, keys and car alarms had caused the number of vehicle thefts to fall from more than 300,000 in 2002, “but sadly they have now increased after bottoming out in 2013 and 2014. We fear thieves are now becoming more and more well equipped with technology capable of defeating car manufacturers’ anti-theft systems.” p Losses lower Financial fraud losses of £366.4m in the first half of 2017 were 8 per cent lower year-on-year, figures from UK Finance show. The data from the finance and banking trade association, covering payment cards, remote banking and cheques, also shows that the industry prevented over £750m of fraud during the same period, or 67 per cent of attempted fraud. This compares with £400.4m of losses and £678.7m of prevented fraud in the first half of 2016. Fraudsters are increasingly trying to use customers’ compromised personal and financial details to carry out fraud. Details are primarily stolen by online attacks, such as data hacks and malware, as well as through impersonation scams directly targeting customers. Katy Worobec, Head of Fraud and Financial Crime Prevention, Cyber and Data Sharing at UK Finance, said: “Tackling fraud is a top priority for the entire industry. But financial fraud is not just an issue for the banking sector – its harmful effects stretch far and wide.” Convincing scammers make contact by phone, email or text pretending to represent a trusted body, perhaps claiming accounts need to be ‘verified’. p Yahoo: now it’s three Yahoo, now part of Oath, last month gave an update to users whose accounts were hacked by an August 2013 data theft previously disclosed by the company in December 2016. Then, Yahoo disclosed that more than one billion accounts had likely been affected. Now Yahoo is saying all three billion user accounts were affected and is sending email notifications to the extra two billion. UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham called it ‘very disappointing’. p Orange in Paris The telecoms firm Orange set up its head office for Orange Cyberdefense, the Group’s corporate cyber-security arm, at La Défense, outside Paris. p Tavcom in Singapore The UK-based security trainers Tavcom Training, with Fonda Global Engineering Pte Ltd, report that security systems training courses are now available in the Asia Pacific region, in Singapore. p www.professionalsecurity.co.uk p50 News <strong>27</strong>-11.indd 1 14/10/2017 11:50
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