The impact of cybercrime on e-invoicing: five highlights

The EU is a key target for cybercrime because of its advanced Internet infrastructure, rates of adoption and increasingly Internet-mediated economies and payment systems.

A few weeks ago Europol, EU’s defence against the dark arts, released their rapport (or iOCTA as they call it) on cybercrime. Underneath or some highlights from this illusive rapport:

• Global corporate losses because of cybercrime stands at around €750 billion per year (source: McAfee). That is per year almost 19 times more than the maximum amount that can be saved with e-invoicing and e-billing. And new illegal activities, including crime-ware distribution and the hacking of corporate databases are increasing that number. That gets one thinking.
• Criminals are trading credit card data for up to $30 per card, bank account information for between $10 – $125 and even your email account data is worth up to $12 in this sophisticated and self–sufficient economy.
• Here comes the scary part for online e-invoicing and e-billing: ‘Criminals are not only interested in details of credit cards and compromised bank accounts, but also our addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, full names and dates of birth’. So, the more widespread e-invoicing is becoming, the likelier the rest will become that cybercriminals are going to focus on (online) billing service providers). So another key action towards 2020 massive e-invoicing adoption: be sure to have made security a non-issue.
• EU Member States already rank amongst the most highly infected countries in the world when it comes to computer viruses and malware. The EU is a key target for cybercrime because of its advanced Internet infrastructure, rates of adoption and increasingly Internet-mediated economies and payment systems.
• Emerging trends like cloud computing and corporate social networks (like Yammer) pose problems when it comes to cybercrime: a threat to users and a challenge to law enforcement. Or the other way around.

More information:
Press release: http://www.europol.europa.eu/index.asp?page=news&news=pr110106.htm