[ISN] Lloyd's faces up to threat of e-crime

http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2219887/lloyd-faces-threat-crime

By Neon Kelly
Computing
26 June 2008

The growing trend of organised gangs turning to e-crime has been 
confirmed by Lloyd's of London, whose networks have been bombarded by 
structured and competent attacks.

Over the past 12 months the world's largest insurance market has found 
that attacks on its systems have become more professional.

"We have noticed a drop off in what I would term 'the enthusiastic 
hacker', the academics who simply want to break through your firewall," 
said Peter Hambling, chief information officer (CIO) at Lloyd's of 
London.

"Criminal behaviour has shifted to take advantage of electronic 
channels, and the people doing this are maturing and getting better at 
it.

"What this means in terms of aligning my IT effort with my business need 
is that I have to set aside a chunk of resources to deal with that 
particular threat, and I have to put more against an organised criminal 
gang than I do against a hobby-hacker."

Hambling said that 87 per cent of the external email coming into Lloyd's 
systems is either spam or infected with malware. Last month, roughly 
1,700 viruses were defeated by the insurer's defences.

The organisation must also deal with an increasing volume of attacks on 
its core systems. "We are now defending 60 high-severity penetration 
attempts on our corporate infrastructure every day," said Hambling.

"On average, something happens every six minutes that requires manual or 
automatic intervention to defend against. We are seeing a real 
escalation in the threat at the door."

[...]


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