Cyber crime a major threat to retail industry

Cyber-crime is now widely recognised as a major threat to the retail industry, according to the British Retail Consortium. Whilst the UK’s National Crime Agency has acknowledged that ‘the true scale and cost of cyber-crime in the UK is unclear at present’, the Office for National Statistics reported that there were around 5.1 million instances of Fraud and 2.5 million instances of cyber-crime last year.

It is a serious issue for the UK retail industry, with 94 percent of those responding to the latest edition of the BRC’s annual crime survey stating that the overall number of cyber breaches is either increasing or remaining the same. Types of online fraud and cyber-crime are extremely varied and include, amongst many others, ‘phishing’, and so-called Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks.

There are 2 types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be

It has been said that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. High profile data breaches affecting the industry, such as that experienced in 2013 by U.S. retailer Target, have shown the reputational damage that can be caused when cyber criminals are successful in their attacks upon companies’ digital networks.

The challenge that retailers face in this context is by no means limited to financial harm, however. It is for this reason that the BRC has developed a programme designed to mitigate the effects of fraud, e-crime, and cyber-attacks affecting the retail industry.

A dedicated Fraud and Cyber Security Member Group of retailers has been established and meets four times each year, during which participants have the opportunity to engage with law enforcement and other invited security policy stakeholders. Retail members of the BRC are actively encouraged to engage with, and contribute to, its fraud and cyber security programme.

Cooperation between the public authorities and the retail industry is therefore a necessary component of UK cyber security. There is much work to be done to improve forms of cooperation, and the BRC’s programme is in place to reduce the long and short term impact of cyber-crime.

For more information on cyber crime and how to prevent it go to www.brc.org.uk

Photo credit: Wikipedia, Source: BRC The Retailer Summer 2016 edition