Europe warned on danger of cyberspying

Member states of the EU must work together to fight online crime and the danger of businesses losing critical information to cyber-snoopers.

A study conducted at the request of EU Commissioner Erkki Liikanen calls for a strategy to deal with the threat from the internet, which is still not fully appreciated. This is borne out by the fact that four out of five people are not using encryption software for personal or business transactions over the internet.

The document asserts that EU member states need to work together more closely if they are going to curb cybercrime. It proposes a common data pool to facilitate analysis and identification of existing security risks.

The proposal also calls for campaigns to raise awareness of the issue in the individual states and within corporations. Public information campaigns to promote research into the causes of security breaches and solutions to the problem have already been planned

Besides the low level of awareness of industrial espionage, the commission paper reports that communications interception, hacking and identity theft are the gravest dangers.

"This mainly affects the large multinational corporation," said Hans-Joachim Bierschenk, an IT security expert with Bitkom. He added that the big concerns, and also smaller operations, have paid little heed to attacks over the internet.

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