Not unsurprisingly, people are getting really annoyed (51% of respondents) and angry (58%) about the impact of cybercrime. However, they blame themselves for being attacked and only 3% of people do not think that it will happen to them.

Despite the emotional burden and the universal threat, and incidents of cybercrime, people are not changing their behaviours – with only 51% of adults saying they would change their behaviour if they became a victim. Fewer than half (44%) reported crime to the police. The point here is that if we as individuals and as a society keep this quiet then we help the criminals stay under the radar.

So what it the cost of cybercrime? Well, in the UK, the cost to resolve cybercrime comes to an average of £103 and about 25-days. This is the down-stream impact and as you can see it is not insubstantial.

The moral compass for some us is leading us into problems. Nearly half of respondents think it is legal to download a single music track, album or movie without paying. But we, in the security community know that downloading files, from sites of dubious authenticity, is a well worn and effective infection vector. The advice really needs to be, ‘there is no such thing as a free music track/album/video’!

Look, the best defence against cybercrime, and the best way to protect yourself, is to surf the internet with up-to-date, comprehensive security software.

You can access the full Norton Cybercrime Report: The Human Impact here.

It appears from reports, that the apps in question were written by security researchers.  They were not intended to be used maliciously. However, Google viewed them as intentionally ‘misrepresenting themselves’ and stepped in. I talking with press and partners in recent weeks, on all things Android and security, I have made the point that the Android marketplace owes its current incarnation to the premise of implicit trust. This incident shows how trust can and is being broken. It will be reassuring to some to see Google step in here, being seen to remove the apps from the marketplace and also from the handsets themselves. However, it does show up a latent risk.

Now, I am sure that it will come as no surprise that I actively endorse the ambition here. Many of you would expect nothing less of me – putting to one side the self-interest angle here for sales Norton software. One of the biggest issues and challenges that we face at Symantec, and the industry as a whole, is to keep consumers and users engaged in the issue of internet safety. For many of them, they simply cannot be bothered and hope for the best. For others, they seem overwhelmed by the never ending stream of new attacks and scams.  

The Australian debate strikes at the heart of this; ensuring that people take adequate precautions to try and protect themselves and the community at large. This is an interesting and very important point. If I take all the time and attention to keep myself safe online, whilst my virtual neighbours do not, then, to borrow a phrase, ‘it is a plague on both of our houses’. If we want to proactively take the fight to the bad guys, then everyone needs to step up. In security, you are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Having people use the internet who are not protected and not taking even basic precautions is worrisome and effects all of us.

There are many questions that I have as a result of the discussion in Australia.  I will be interested to see how they are addressed. What actually will constitute ‘internet security software’? What will the role and the responsibility of the ISP be ensuring that a user is using security software and what will enforcement of this look and feel like. I am sure it is going to be interesting.

Norton Mobile sees us deepen and broaden our security for smartphone devices. We have just put into Beta, Norton Smartphone Security for Android. It has a really cool SMS enabled remote lock and wipe function. This provides physical security for your Android smartphone. Should you lose, or, have your phone stolen, in a matter of seconds you can wipe all the sensitive and personal information from the smartphone. It has a lot of other neat security functions built into it. You can download it from the Android marketplace, or, from our new Norton mobile web site, www.m.norton.com. This web site is optimised to work with mobile browsers. It is an important initiative in its own right. Providing information and videos on how to protect yourself online from a mobile, offering Beta, free and trialware versions of all our mobile products. From the site you can also download Norton Connect. This is a mobile app for the iPhone, iPad and Android, that allows Norton 360 and NOBU customers to access their online backups. We have also placed Norton Connect into the Apple appstore and the Android marketplace.

So, the mobile strategy moves Norton beyond the traditional PC: but we are not stopping there. There are many devices that will allow you to surf the internet. A great example of this are games consoles, and what about the latest and coolest gadget in town, the iPad. These devices can and will benefit from having some basic element of security in place, when they are out there ‘surfing the ‘net’. We have figured out a way of doing that for them. It is called Norton DNS. We have established our own Domain Name Service (DNS). This is analogous to the ‘switchboard’ of the internet, interpreting and connecting the URLs we type, into numeric IP addresses that power the internet. The service is up and operational. If you surf to www.nortondns.com you can find out more about it and how to start to use it. We are in the process of creating software that you can install onto your PC or Android device, that will automatically configure Norton DNS for you.

Finally, there are many other devices that will be connected to the internet. You will not surf the ‘net from them, rather, they will use the it to provide that service or utility to you as a consumer e.g. smart electricity meter, smart fridge, digital ‘photo frame, internet enabled TV etc. All of these devices are valuable, as such, they could ultimately come under attack or exploitation. That is where Norton Embedded Devices steps in. There are technologies, approaches and capabilities, that we have built to secure, support, update and backup PCs. We believe that these can and should be used by consumer manufacturers building and implementing the new generation of ‘smart’ internet enabled devices. We have partnered and invested in a company called Mocana. They are experts in building and deploying security solutions for embedded devices. We believe, that the combination of Symantec and Mocana, will provide the basis to, truly, allow us to enable ‘Norton Everywhere’.

Expect great things from ‘Norton Everywhere’.

There is an interesting story in the BBC. In this ‘experiment’ a scientist infected himself with a computer virus. They loaded the virus on to a computer chip and then inserted the chip into the man. They then went onto prove that the chip could then spread the virus onto other systems that the man came into contact with, for example, door entry systems.

 This really needs to be put down as a ‘proof of concept’ experiment. It is thought-provoking but not necessarily revelatory. It is a headline grabber no doubt and you can see that the BBC have had some fun with it. My offering would have been: ‘Man becomes Worm’.

What does this tell us? It tells us that the cyber-criminals are finding it worthwhile and profitable. It also tells us that they are ‘loading’ up on fake antivirus as an extremely effective way to compromise people’s machines.  They are also becoming more convincing in how they present the fake antivirus malware to end users. It would also suggest that fake antivirus is not going away any time soon and people need to be on their guard.

I suppose it never would really occur to us that many of these MFDs would have a hard disk in them. We all know that they have to have some sort of storage in them, don’t we? Hence, why jobs get ‘queued’ to the printer, then we all stand around waiting for my ‘job’ to complete. This story from CBS News, really made me think. They report that ‘Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive – like the one on your personal computer – storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine. In the process, it’s turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or sensitive data.’

CBS News launched an investigation, where they bought second hand copiers. They bought four for circa $300. They took them away, then removed the hard drives in them and had a look at what was stored on them. There was a lot of valuable information; tens of thousands of documents. On one used by a sex crimes unit, they found information which detailed domestic violence complaints. One copier, used by a Police drugs unit, contained a list of targets in a drugs raid. One other copier was used by a health insurance company and had 300-pages of individual medical records.

It really makes you think – does it not. It is a wake call to the manufacturers of these devices and the companies who use them, to consider how to erase and remove information from them. We as consumers need to think about the printers and copiers we use at home and understand if they contain a hard drive. If they do, then you need to find out from the manufacturer, or the retailer who sold it to you, to understand how you can erase the drive when you are finished with the device.

The factual narrative is enlivened by focusing on the story of two individuals who have battled against the rise in cybercrime. Barret Lyon, a computer whizz who unwittingly became embroiled in protecting legitimate and illegitimate businesses against attacks. Andrew Crocker is a British detective, who in working for the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit in the UK, went to Russia to track down and prosecute hackers and to find out who they ultimately worked for. 

The books offers great insights into how cybercrime works, who is involved and why it is being used. It is truly shocking and thought-provoking, in equal measure.

The ISTR also identifies some interesting developments with respect to personal email accounts. These are being bought and sold, batered and traded among  the cybercriminals for as little as 65p, or $1. Gaining access to a personal email account allows them to then distribute malware from this account via people’s trusted network of contacts. Compromised email accounts also often provide access to additional sensitive personal information, such as bank passwords, mailing addresses and phone numbers and other passwords and online accounts. The data could be used to reset passwords, potentially giving fraudsters complete access to personal accounts and indeed whole identities. It really is a wake-up call to everyone to guard their personal email accounts jealously. Instead of using it as a default filing cabinet for other login credentials and passwords, this information should be moved out of your personal email folder and stored in a safer place. People really now need to use password management tools and software. You can take a look at and download the ISTR here.

At the heart of this Norton release is the industry leading reputation-based security technology. New to 2011, Download Insight 2.0  increases the breadth of the product’s reputation protection by applying it to virtually every download  regardless of the client (browser, email, IM).  This helps ensure that users are protected from harmful downloads no matter how the file is delivered to their machine. Additionally, Norton 2011 uses the reputation information to report on the “trustworthiness” of files on a system and help users understand if their download behavior is more or less risky versus the 53 million Norton Community Watch members today.  You can download it here.

Furthermore we are also providing into BETA some additional tools. Symantec is announcing several new tools in the fight against cybercrime. These tools will remain free and address some of today’s trickiest and most prevalent issues related to malware infection and removal. We are introducing Norton Safe Web for Facebook, that will scan feeds for malicious URLs. You can download it here.

Norton Power Eraser is a tool specifically designed to help find and remove those ‘scareware’ applications that are adept at deceiving you and prove difficult to remove. You can down load it here.

Finally, we have the Norton Bootable Recovery Tool, which  allows Norton users to boot a PC into a safe state when a system is so deeply infected that it will not properly start up. New this year, the Norton Bootable Recovery Tool wizard automatically creates a CD/DVD/USB bootable device in a quick and easy way. You can download it here.