Dark Market: Cyber thieves, cyber cops and you

15th Sep 2011; 13:00

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RSA Thursday

The benefits of living in a digital, globalised society are enormous, but so too are the dangers. The world has become a law enforcer’s nightmare and a criminal’s dream.

Governments and the private sector are losing billions of dollars each year, fighting an increasingly invisible, super-smart breed of criminal: the hacker. The investigation into so-called 'hacktivists' like LulzSec, Topiary and Anonymous has led to the Met quadrupling its cybercrime unit, but are these units really effective, and how can they keep pace with the ever-morphing nature of cybercrime?

We bank online, shop online, date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world? Have we become complacent about our personal security – sharing our thoughts, beliefs and the details of our daily lives with anyone who cares to relieve us of them?

Misha Glenny, historian, journalist, and author of the international bestseller McMafia, explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the 21st century: cyber crime, cyber warfare and cyber industrial espionage.

Chair: John Kampfner, chief executive, Index on Censorship and author of Freedom for Sale (Simon and Schuster, 2010)

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #RSAglenny

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