Dear Reader
Currently, India is witnessing two distinct trends in law breaking: An increase in crimes such as burglary, chain snatching and carjacking, and multiplication of incidents of cybercrime.
The first can be mainly attributed to burgeoning cities where the youth, with spiralling aspirations, are under considerable stress due either to their inability to get jobs or to the difficulty in holding on to existing ones. Both trigger crime, violent as well as white collar. Another disturbing aspect of this trend is the increase in the number of incidents where firearms have been brandished to carry out the crime. A majority of these firearms are unlicensed!
Cybercrimes too have shown a sharp upward increase as per data available. This can be attributed to an increase in online financial and commercial transactions as a result of burgeoning number of mobile devices, due to better connectivity, and to higher network bandwidths.
Unfortunately, the police are unable to handle both these trends efficiently as they are ill equipped, ill trained and understaffed. There are not enough uniformed men available to deploy for beat duties on the streets. The rise of cybercrime has added a new dimension to investigative work. Only a small percentage of the cops are trained to handle this challenge, making the whole gamut of law keeping a daunting task. We will need a very strong political will and allocation of adequate resources to arrest and to turn around these trends.
The social networking website LinkedIn was hacked on 5 June 2012, and passwords for nearly 6.5 million user accounts were stolen by cybercriminals. Owners of the hacked accounts were no longer able to access their accounts, and the website repeatedly encouraged its users to change their passwords after the incident. Apart from losing its reputation, LinkedIn faced a $5 million lawsuit from one of its long time users, who complained that the company did not keep their promises to provide secure connections and databases.
It’s not only large corporations that are the target of cyber criminals, even SMBs are being increasingly hit, their websites and servers are being invaded with ransomware and money is demanded in the form online payments and even bitcoins for restoration.
Within the corporate world the CSOs looking after physical security too are a worried lot. Intense competition is squeezing security budgets while their managements expect then to deliver more. The convergence of Physical Security and IT too has prompted the managements to explore the possibilities of replacing one with the other. And when this happens, it does not take a person with exceptional intelligence to figure out who wins! It’s easier to learn about physical security than to acquire IT skills!
Our cover feature this month is on the Banking and Financial Services sector, where the threat of cyber frauds is paramount. The reported hacking of Bangladesh’s central bank accounts with the U.S. Federal Reserve, where more than $80 million were wired and laundered via several casinos in the Philippines, once again shows how bad the impact of cyber-attacks on organizations, enterprises or even nation-states can be.
Security should not be a simple item on a checklist. It should be a process, an attitude, and a mind-set. The Bangladesh incident adds to the growing list of evidence that supports this statement, especially now that cyber-attacks are getting bigger and definitely more “real” in terms of impact.
This month SECURITY TODAY goes to Chennai to participate in south India’s largest Security And Fire Exhibition, SAFE 2016, as the Official Media Partner of UBM, who also organise India’s largest security exhibition, IFSEC India. We will of course publish the report on SAFE 2016 in our next issue for the benefit of thousands of our readers all over the world who may not be there to walk the aisles.
Till then, Stay Safe
G B Singh
Email: editor@securitytoday.in
Follow me on @EditorGB
Connect with me on Linkedin
