A surge of Internet and other electronic crime around Wales has prompted the planning of the first Welsh cybercrime conference to be held in February.
Welsh police have also formed a partnership against cybercrime with the British National Hi-Tech Crime Unit and the Welsh Development Agency, whose workshops between now and February will produce findings expected to be central when the E-Crime Congress meets February 8 in Cardiff.
"Hi-tech crime is the illegal exploitation of computer technologies like the Internet, whether to attack the new technology itself or in order to support so-called old crimes such as fraud, identity theft, and embezzlement," North Wales Police Det. Supt. Chris Corcoran told the BBC. "The workshops are important to crystallize the concerns of organizations in Wales.
"In the battle against hi-tech crime everyone has a responsibility to be alert, know how to protect their technology and report incidents to the relevant authorities,” he continued. "The workshops are all about how people get this information about businesses, we still write passwords on post-it notes and put them on our computers. We don't want to tell people what their concerns are. It's all about sharing information.”
Welsh police are now targeting high-tech crime around the country, including virus attacks, hacking, fraud, and identity and corporate data theft, with the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit saying a total of 83 percent of businesses in the United Kingdom reporting electronic crime in the last year.
Just how much of that actually belongs to Wales isn’t yet determined, but Welsh authorities aren’t taking chances. Police groups held a conference this week to discuss the matter but the big conference is planned to be the E-Crime Congress.
Recent Welsh cybercrime reports have included a teen from Pontypool in the southern region offering thousands worth of non-existent items for auction on eBay, and a 22-year-old hacker from Llandudno who confessed to sending viruses to at least 27,000 computers around the world, according to British news reports.
Corcoran said they did not know how big the problem actually is in Wales. "It's a problem U.K. wide but we don't know about the problem in Wales," said Det. Supt. Chris Corcoran of North Wales Police to the BBC. "I don't think it's a major problem but we're trying to be one step ahead."
