Cyber Crime Threat Rising Sharply

The threat of cybercrime is rising sharply, experts have warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos. They called for a new system to tackle well-organised gangs of cybercriminals.

Online theft costs $1 trillion a year, the number of attacks is rising sharply and too many people do not know how to protect themselves, they said.

The internet was vulnerable, they said, but as it was now part of society's central nervous system, attacks could threaten whole economies.

The past year had seen "more vulnerabilities, more cybercrime, more malicious software than ever before", more than had been seen in the past five years combined, one of the experts reported.