Cyber crime is likely to bring about as much destruction as the credit crisis in the coming years if international regulation is not improved, some of the world’s top crime experts said. Damage caused by cyber crime is estimated at $100 billion annually, said Kilian Strauss, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)."These criminals outsmart us ten, or a hundred to one," Strauss told Reuters, adding more Internet experts were needed to investigate and tackle cyber crime.
Criminal organizations are exploiting a regulatory vacuum to commit Internet crimes such as computer spying, money-laundering and theft of personal information, and the scope for damage is vast, experts told a European Economic Crime conference in Frankfurt. "We need multilateral understanding, account and oversight to avoid, in the years to come, a cyber crisis equivalent to the current financial crisis," Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said.
Internet crime is also a threat to national security, they said. Several countries, including the United States, have voiced concern over some hackers’ abilities to electronically spy on them and disrupt computer networks.
Calls for greater regulation of the Internet come at a time of regulatory renaissance, with policymakers looking to support the powers of financial sector watchdogs in the wake of the global financial crisis. "Because of the transnational nature of identity-related crime, and especially of cyber-crime, if we do not tackle the crime everywhere we will not solve it anywhere," Costa said.
The President of Interpol, Khoo Boon Hui, said increasingly highly technological gangs from Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa were coming up with ever more sophisticated ways of swindling money from vulnerable people. He also said there was a trend of company bosses being bribed by fraudsters claiming to have guilty evidence about their firms.
Strauss, who works as Senior Program Officer at the Office of the Coordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental activities, said Internet crime watchdogs could learn a lot from criminals willing to switch sides. According to Kilian Strauss,______.