Lords calls on technology firms to protect surfers

A House of Lords Select Committee has called on the Government and service providers to take urgent strong measures to protect internet users against crime.

Users should not be expected to take full responsibility for web security as they will “always be outfoxed by the bad guys,” the Lords Science and Technology Committee said in its report on personal internet security.

Speaking at the launch of the report last week, Lord Broers, Chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology sub committee, branded the internet “a playground for criminals.”

He said that the organisations profiting from internet services, “including the IT industry, software vendors, banks and internet traders, should take a share of responsibility when it came to security and data breaches.”

Lord Broers called upon the Government to create a central unit responsible for dealing with e-crime incidents and urged ministers to invest in a data security breach notification law which, the Committee said would lead to better data protection and law enforcement.

Security vendors, such as MacAfee and Kapersky, while welcoming the broad recommendations in the report, were quick to express concern about the liability issue which they said would be “difficult to uphold.”

However, George Gardiner at Gardiner Law, disagreed and said this could be easily done if all parties, “namely ISP’s and security firms got together and built an industry group instead of trying to constantly arguing over which policy was better.”

He showed more leniency for the Government, which he said should not be made responsible for the “appalling products sold by vendors” and which would find it “impossible to monitor whether or not security firms were actually upholding their responsibility.”