Expert: India 3rd largest producer of spam mails

Chennai: Raising concerns about cyber security in India, US cyber expert Larry Clinton said India was the third largest producer of spam mails across the globe and cyber crime cases in the country had gone up by 50 per cent during the last year alone.

While addressing members of the cyber security and privacy foundation, administrators of city colleges and students, Larry Clinton, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Security Alliance, USA said, “Every minute, over $ two million worth money is lost across the globe due to cyber crime.”

However, most of these crimes - close to 85-90%, were basic attacks that could be reined in by putting prevalent practices into use. The key to stepping up this security was the coordination of government and industry, he pointed out. “About 95 per cent CFOs are not involved in information security strategy, and this keeps them in the dark about the looming threat,” Clinton said. However, they may be enthused if governments introduce economic concessions such as tax rebates and sops to increase expenditure on cyber security in their firms.

Emerging technologies only added to decreasing security layers and were increasingly exposing corporates and governments to risks, Clinton said. “Technologies such as VOIP, BYOD, cloud computing, etc, are all much less secure and only increase the risks of cyber crime.” In fact, 62 per cent security professionals worldwide have little faith on data on cloud and only 48 per cent of them have put their records on cloud, he said.