IRISSCERT conference kicks off, as statistics reveal level of cyber crime against Irish websites

Almost all website hacks in Ireland this year had been attributed to organised crime gangs with the first motivation being financial.

As the Irish reporting and data security service (IRISSCERT) conference happens in Dublin today, the service released statistics for 2011, revealing that from 1 January until 31 October, IRISSCERT had 441 security incidents reported to it, 92 per cent of which involving Irish websites being broken into by criminals to host phishing sites to focus on unsuspecting users. Slightly below all (96 per cent) were suspected of being sponsored by organised crime gangs.

IRISSCERT also revealed that there have been three major issues which targeted three specific and separate Irish organisations, where it co-ordinated the response and alerted the possible victims so that they could take one of the most appropriate action to cope the threat.

Spokesperson Brian Honan, said: “The volume and sort of incidents we sort out each day are a transparent indication to Irish businesses that cyber crime is an actual threat to our systems, our businesses and the economy.

“We can now not afford to regard information security as an afterthought and wish to make sure we take the correct steps to secure our systems. Criminals are sharing information and dealing together so as to exploit our systems and steal our money. Businesses have to better share information with the community so all of us can learn; IRISSCERT provides this facility.”

This year's IRISSCERT cyber crime conference happens today (23 November) on the D4 Berkley Hotel in Dublin, and includes speakers from Sourcefire, Trustwave SpiderLabs, the IEDR, Trend Micro and Realex Payment Systems. Also speaking is Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, and previous SC Magazine Information Security Person of the Year Stephen Bonner, now a partner at KPMG.

In parallel to the conference, IRISSCERT will host HackEire, the Irish cyber security challenge. The challenge will see a network configured comparable to that of an Irish company operating on the web, and as much as ten teams will compete against one another to breach the defences of that network.