thecrimeshop

Cybercrime Continues to Grow

and no relief is in sight

Cybercrime is an ever growing and continuing problem, as well as very lucrative business that is plaguing the world.  What’s worse is that not even our own government is immune to it. The issue at hand is how do we combat it? How do we bring cyber criminals to justice?

Prosecuting anyone for a vast majority of it is unattainable to say the least. Today I read an interesting article published by the Daily Dot http://bit.ly/1So305t, where a Florida lawmaker is asking that President Obama devise a seciruty plan in an effort to combat cybercrime.

Republican Rep. Dennis Ross is asking the president to basically devise a plan that creates an agency whose sole responsibility is to take the lead in cybercrime rather than what we have set up today. Many agencies are combatting it in theory, it’s sort of a free for all if you will and in case anyone hasn’t noticed, what we have currently isn’t really working but…is that the fault of our government?

At times, the agencies don’t play well together particularly when it comes to sharing things like intel.

In theory Rep. Ross’s plan is a great one however several steps further need to be taken if we are to truly combat cybercrime. For instance one thought is that other nations need to be major players in this, not merely the US work with them. Many cyber criminals hide in other nations knowing they will never be extradited and in some countries they’ll never even see a trial for such crimes let alone any type of punishment.

It makes more sense to create a multi-nation-multi-government cyber-crime agency.

The other piece to all of this is the obvious the bottom line is simple, people, individuals, citizens and business leaders and owners need to utilize caution and become educated about cybercrime.

The hospitals that have fallen victim (one of them is in Rep. Ross’s district), for instance to hackers who held hospital systems hostage until a ransom was paid are the perfect example of becoming educated about cybercrime and how it works.

Leaders of these organizations can and should no longer be able to rely on ignorance to the problem as a scapegoat and we should not allow those individuals who lead these hospitals to play the victim card. They are ultimately responsible for the problem by not ensuring each respective hospitals data was on a secured network so that it could not be held for a ransom.

We’ve been hearing about cybercrime for a good long while now, unless you live under a rock I am pretty sure you have heard of it. What I am saying is, don’t enable the hospital’s leadership to use a cop-out here. They were put into leadership roles because they are not ignorant, now is one of those times when they don’t get to play ignorant because it’s convenient.  Hacking seems like the perfect scapegoat but in reality, using the excuse “I never thought it would happen to me or our organization,” is bullshit.

Companies, some really good one’s will come into your organization and not only educate you about cybercrime but let you know where your vulnerabilities are, and for a fee, you can pay these said companies to build and maintain a secure network for you. They even monitor your network, the monitoring comes with all the bells and whistles such as 24/7 monitoring so if something is happening they are alerted to it and they stop it.

If your IT partner (s), i.e. the company you have outsourced to isn’t sharing it’s security setup with you, fire them. If an organization decides to cut corners at it’s customers expense they should be held accountable just as organizations who produce cars that are unsafe to drive. This goes for both the IT partners taking care of said companies and the companies/organizations themselves. In business one of the corners cut is more often than not, network security.

Sometimes even a layman can set up a network that is pretty secure, take me for instance. I did not go to school for this but just about every company I have worked for eventually ended up scrapping the IT company that they had and used me as the network guy. Not sure why, but I can tell you plain and simple if your network isn’t secure, you are a prime target, this even applies to fax lines that are run through VOIP.

In an age where everything is for sale or if it can be held for ransom, cybercrime will continue to grow. It is after all a very lucrative business and since we are part of such a digital age, can anyone really ensure safety from cybercrime?

The agencies now who are all responsible for overseeing cybercrime are less than effective let alone impressive. Many of those agencies have been hacked themselves so promoting from within would not do much to make the public feel any more safe. Sometimes bringing in those that haven’t always been so straight and narrow, might just be good for business.

Keeping personal feelings out of it, let’s just say for the sake argument that President Obama is not a stupid man, I’m pretty sure that even he knows what a huge undertaking a bill like this would be.

Given that we live in such a digital era, everything is a smart device, baby monitors, toothbrushes, cars, homes, tv’s, appliances, camera’s, etc, the proposed agency would have to have a very wide range of experts in order to be effective, it certainly begs the question, would the general public and/or congress, let alone President Obama want to spend the needed funds to run such an organization and employ such a wide range of experts? To take it a step further, how would they measure the success of the agency aside from creating bills and guidelines? What about the apprehension and prosecution of cyber criminals?

Some of the items on the bill, like #6 are readily available online and through security companies who are up to date on cyber threats.

I’m just not seeing the meat and potato’s in this bill, but am curious as to where it ends up. It’s currently awaiting consideration by the House Judiciary Committee.

It is below for you to view if you’d like.

Cristal M Clark

@thecrimeshop

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F:\M14\ROSSFL\ROSSFL_039.XML

……………………………………………………………
(Original Signature of Member)

H. R. ll

114TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION

To direct the President to develop and submit to Congress a comprehensive
strategy to combat cybercrime, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr. ROSS introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee
on _____________________

A BILL

To direct the President to develop and submit to Congress a comprehensive strategy to combat cybercrime, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,


SECTION 1

PRESIDENTIAL STRATEGY TO COMBAT CYBERCRIME.

Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall submit to Congress a comprehensive strategy to combat cybercrime, which shall include the following:

(1) A recommendation for a definition of cybercrime to be used by the Federal Government.

(2) A recommendation and a plan for which Federal agency should take the lead role in investigating and combating cybercrime.

(3) A review of the strategy on combating cybercrime of each Federal agency engaged in com-
bating cybercrime as of the date of the enactment of this Act.

(4) A review of the efforts to combat cybercrime of the governments of other countries, as determined appropriate by the President.

(5) A plan for how the Federal Government should work with State governments and with the
Governments of other countries to combat cybercrime.

(6) A description of the threats that cybercrime poses to individuals, businesses, and governments, and recommendations for protecting against such threats.

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