14 DAY TRIAL // Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) revealed that the institution has a new cybercrime division launched to combat tax fraud attempts.
The team’s purpose is to shut down shady websites that claim to have connection to HMRC, to issue reports regarding the hijacking or misuse of passwords and other sensitive information, and to perform criminal investigations on organizations that use cybercrime techniques.
Its duties also include working with other government and law enforcement agencies to reduce the threats that target both the public and private sector, and to maintain contact with customers that are considered to be high-risk.
“As more and more of HMRC’s systems move online, cyber criminals will look to exploit any opportunity to attack the repayment system. HMRC is getting ahead of the curve – taking forward what it is already doing in a better way,” said David Gauke, the Exchequer secretary.
“In the last year alone, customers reported over 200k bogus emails purporting to come from HMRC and, as a result, HMRC shut down close to 1,000 bogus websites.”
While this may not completely discourage cybercminials, the highly capable technical experts, analysts and investigators tasked to protect the HMRC and its customers will surely represent at least a “bump” in the operations launched by fraudsters.
The British government spent £917 million (1.1 billion EUR or $1.43 billion) for this and other measures designed to tackle tax evasion, but they hope that the efforts will raise around £7 billion (8.4 billion EUR or $11 billion) each year by 2012/2015.
“This new unit will play a vital role in tackling online organised tax fraud and we have committed National Cyber Security Programme funding to it to ensure we are better prepared to deal with cyber threats and are better able to protect the public and businesses online,” Francis Maude, Minister for Cyber Security, said.