NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository

some of these firms may have adopted methodologies and techniques that inflate the
scale of the problem and the level of vulnerability, not least as a means of generating
business. Here again, government intervention is required to develop a code of practice
for the private sector which could be enforced by an Ombudsman.
Both the private and the public sectors are increasingly looking to the policy research
and academic communities for a greater input into understanding and analysing
cybercrime, especially with regard to ‘over-the-horizon’ perspective. Although
cybercrime research is now an accepted criminology sub-discipline, it remains in a
developmental stage. More criminologists (and IT experts) need to be trained in this
area, although it has begun to attract the attention of the UK research councils. 246 At the
regional and international level, genuine institutional partnerships and networks need to
be forged, developed and maintained. There is an urgent need for research on the
different approaches that individual countries have taken to combat cybercrime. 247
As is often the case, efforts to combat cybercrime would be greatly enhanced if greater
collaboration and co-ordination could be achieved; in policing, this would seem to be the
main raison d’être for the creation of the E-Crime Unit. However, co-ordinated activities
need to be looked at across the board. Financial cybercrime is increasing exponentially.
In due course it will begin to affect a global banking system already severely weakened
by the global financial crisis. The system cannot continue to mask the scale and nature
of the problem by compensating, in good faith, the victims of theft and fraud (and then
presumably passing on the costs to their customers). Co-ordination and collaboration
can make the best use of the limited resources available that may not increase in the
future to anything like the level required.
Our research has clearly indicated that there is no technical fix available. One of the
most difficult policy areas concerns individual lapses in personal security – the human
dimension.
246 The UK’s Technology Strategy Board has recently begun to devote funding for the creation of centres for
the development of security technologies.
247 France, for example, is thought to have fared less badly on account of relatively strict state controls over
the overall banking system, whereas the US banking system is particularly vulnerable.
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