Pictured above: Keynote speakers at the Challinors E-fraud briefing Jason Hart (CRYPTOCard), Arun Chauhan, Paul Griffiths and Mark Kenkre (all Challinors) and Lance Ashworth QC (St Philips Chambers, Birmingham)

The number of attacks on websites has reached 2,500 every hour and the pace of technology is doing little to stem the rise in risk levels for confidential information, according to information security commentator, Jason Hart, speaking at an E-fraud briefing in Birmingham.

"There are rising numbers of attacks on information security and IT systems continue to be built on vulnerable and insecure foundations," he said. "The Password is the biggest problem facing the internet and business today and it can take less than two minutes for a hacker to find someone's password and infiltrate a company website or secure IT system, and Firewalls and Security software pose little barriers to hackers."

CEO of information security and solutions company CRYPTOCard, Jason Hart was speaking at the E-fraud breakfast briefing hosted by Midlands law firm Challinors. 

The fifth in its series of briefings dedicated to issues surrounding the threat from fraud to businesses, speakers also included Arun Chauhan, joint head of Challinors' niche Fraud & Asset Recovery department. He explained: "E-fraud is an area set to continue to rise, but is probably the one area of fraud that lawyers consider to be the hardest for recovery, not least due to the increasing sophistication of online fraudsters and the key issue of identifying the perpetrator of the fraud.

"Latest estimates put the loss to UK consumers from online and email fraud at £3.5 billion, whilst 73 percent of adults in the UK have received a scam email in the last 12 months. It is highly important therefore, for businesses to ensure all employees are vigilant and alert to the threat of email scams and IT integrity attacks." 

Co-head of the team, Mark Kenkre, added: "Hackers are increasingly making headway into penetrating business firewalls to access confidential and sensitive information on commercial IT networks. As a consequence, certain types of E-fraud are on the rise, including identity fraud and the hidden crime of credit and debit card, which cost UK banks £440 million last year alone. Prevention is much better than seeking recovery after the event, so all businesses should take advantage of the latest technology to protect their IT systems and networks, and always ensure sensitive and confidential information is only ever stored on a highly secure server."

Guest speaker at the event, Lance Ashworth QC of Birmingham's St Philip's Chambers explained that businesses can seek protection from existing systems and technology in the event of a breach of their IT security: "If a rogue employee or former employee abuses access to invaluable customer data and removes a copy for their own use, businesses can easily rely on recovering the data under the Database Rights Act. If documents are believed to be fabricated, metadata, which is 'behind' all documents created on computers, can often be used in court to prove when a document was created and hence if it has been fabricated."

He also advised businesses to ensure robust systems are in place: "A recent case in which a national company left its data records vulnerable, which in turn led to a hacker accessing them and then using them to attempt to blackmail the company, demonstrate the scale of what can go wrong if companies and their IT contractors, don't take care of important customer data and where it is stored."

Challinors has offices in Birmingham, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Halesowen and Nottingham. The firm has 24 partners and over 100 fee earners, and is ranked as one of the top legal firms in the West Midlands, being Number 1 in the Chambers UK Directory in a number of categories, including Clinical Negligence.