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EU Takes Action Against Cybercrime, Spam
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2006-06-01
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The European Union is planning to strengthen measures against hackers, cyber crime, and even spam. A plan formulated by the European Commission hopes to address the former two problems by sending out alerts about breaches of Internet security.
EU Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding is concerned that too little money is spent on making systems resistant to identity theft, virus attacks, and spam e-mail. Only between 5 and 13 percent of Internet technology budgets is earmarked for security issues, an amount the Commission found "alarmingly low."
"In the past, hackers were motivated by a desire to show off, whereas today, many threats come from criminal activities and are motivated by profit," Reding said. As this trend grows, so will the need for protection against it. The march of progress also brings some more problems to the table.
"As the systems and networks continue to grow and become increasingly complex, we can expect a number of unprecedented security issues to emerge," the Commission predicted. The Commission also said that every entity should actively "preserve and protect" its own security, in addition to any cooperative efforts.
The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) spearheads those joint efforts, gathering information regarding breaches of security within the 25-nation EU bloc. It then attempts to create a "best practice" response. "ENISA will also be asked to examine the feasibility of a multilingual information sharing and alert system," the Commission said.
Additionally, the EU is considering amendments to its laws concerning spam, which have been largely successful within their limited coverage. But as Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr pointed out, about 90 percent of spam in the EU comes from outside the bloc.
Hopefully the new measures taken by the EU will do as they're intended, and decrease the occurrence of both true crimes and simple annoyances on the Internet.
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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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