Stand and deliver [modern day highwaymen are making a mint from cybercrime]

The various types of computer-based fraud collectively known as ´e-crime´ are costing British businesses billions of pounds a year. That is the warning from a new survey of hundreds of companies by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) which has found that virtually all lost out to some degree during the course of 2004. The FBI has identified two significant threats to cybersecurity. Traditional crimes like identity theft that have migrated online are expected to increase dramatically in the next few years. At the same time, new types of crime are emerging that the Internet has made possible, for example, extortion associated with denial of service attacks. They pose a powerful threat that we must all address.