5 million Brits cancelled their bank cards due to fraud in 2015.
Research commissioned by moneysupermarket.com and carried out by polling company Populus, has shown that one in ten adults have had to replace their credit or debit cards after being targeted in cyber attacks.
Key findings:
- One in ten adults have had to replace their credit or debit cards as a result of cyber attack
- £475 was the average amount lost in each attack
- £2.1 billion is approximately the resulting annual costs to banks
- 10% had their cards duplicated at an ATM machine
- 8% reported being hacked when making a contactless payment at a till
Jody Baker, head of money at the company, said: “We’re constantly being warned of the dangers of cyber attacks but it is still a shock if it happens to you. Most of the transactions we make now are digital and our research suggests that over a quarter of people carry as little as £10 in cash. With so many of us shopping and banking on the internet, combined with a rise in contactless payments, it is more important than ever to be vigilant when managing your money.”
National statistics for crime almost doubled this year when fraud and cybercrime were included in the Crime Survey of England and Wales for the first time. However, less than one per cent of cyberfraud cases are actively investigated, and not even one in 650 frauds committed online result in a conviction. Professor Ross Anderson, a security engineering expert at the University of Cambridge, attributed these figures to a lack of specialist anti-cybercrime officers. He told the Times: “A typical police force has only one or two officers dedicated to cybercrime, so unless internet fraudsters get involved in terrorism or [online child abuse] they are almost guaranteed to get away with it.”
Infosec Partners have been actively working with the Police to help train up cybercrime divisions and are working with schools to provide better cybersecurity awareness for students and their families.
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