Last week, the British government trumpeted news of a planned new court, which will be based in the country's financial district and will focus upon economic offences such as fraud and cybercrime. Some politicians have heralded the new facility, which is currently described as the City of London Judicial Centre, as a sign of how London will, in the era of Brexit, remain at the forefront of legal expertise1. The pace of technological change implicit in cybercrime has challenged courts around the world to apply laws to new technical versions of traditional crimes – a court that regularly focuses on these questions is likely to be more effective over the longer term.
Beyond the headlines, the plan for a new centralized court for cybercrime (and other economic crimes) is a timely reminder of the significant cyber threats faced by those who do business in the UK. Generally, media attention has focused, and continues to focus, upon large-scale losses of personal data, such as the TalkTalk hack in 2015, the Tesco Bank hack in 2016, and the more recent Equifax episode. There are many more cases that go unreported. The Crime Survey for England and Wales, published earlier this year, stated that there were an estimated two million computer misuse offences (or 'cybercrimes'), meaning the unauthorized access to data or the intentional disruption of data systems (e.g. denial-of-service attacks), during 2016. Of course, the very nature of cybercrime means that offending is under-reported, which the National Crime Agency (the NCA) emphasized in its recently published annual threat assessment regarding serious crime. Click here for more..
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