Securing our Government

In fact, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australians lost close to $1 billion to fraud and scams last year. Symantec also claims credit card details can sell for $0.40 and bank account information for as low as $10; European details are more expensive than those from the US.

In many cases these underworld crime groups are using highly sophisticated tools to ply their trade.

"Today it's all about cyber crime, it is organised criminals and the organised criminals are sophisticated," AVG marketing manager, Lloyd Borrett, said. "They are using exploits just as sophisticated as our government security agencies are capable of and you almost have to have that level of protection. They are interested in getting information about individuals in any way they can."

For Borrett one of the most common ways at the moment is through web exploits; hacking websites to plant malware.

"That has two implications for government users," he explained. "One, they have to make sure their people have security on their desktops to prevent being attacked in that way. They also need to up the level of protection they have on their websites to stop this sort of thing happening. Government websites have been targeted successfully by the bad guys."

Clear and present dangers

Aside from website attacks there are several other threats the government sector faces. Sophos channel sales manager, Zoe Nicholson, pointed to data loss as one focal point.

"The government space is no different to anywhere else I would suggest," she said. "From a security perspective the biggest threat this year is data loss prevention, which is massive."

With several high-profile cases occurring in the UK - most recently around classified documents on terrorist groups being left on the subway - it is no surprise data loss prevention is high on the priorities list for governments.

Symantec director systems engineering, Paul Lancaster, said governments in Australia were generally on the right track with dealing with these kinds of security issues.

"We are seeing the attack trends to be the same, all the way from the US across to Madrid there is always something around the same level and the trends we are looking at are around spam, phishing and malicious attacks as well," he said. "We are seeing that in Australia but probably not to the highest degree that we know."

Traditional threats such as spam are also still big in the government space, according to MessageLabs country manager, Andrew Antal. In fact, the volume of email government departments receive and the resources needed to deal with it is a headache taking on migraine proportions.

"Government in general is still highly targeted from a spam standpoint," Antal said. "So it's more about reduction of bandwidth costs and reducing the annoyance around spam."