Criminals gangs plant insiders in banks

By Rodney Appleyard

Nov 15th, 2004: Australian financial companies will have to brace themselves for a new criminal trend that has already hit the U.K. and could catch on over here too if hackers and fraudsters consider it an opportunity too good to miss.

A report published by the Financial Services Authority in the U.K. has found evidence that organised crime groups deliberately target firms to place staff to commit financial crime, particularly identity theft.

It has warned that firms should pay more due and attention to vetting their staff carefully before assigning jobs.

Philip Robinson, the financial crime sector leader at the FSA, said: "Firms should follow a preventative approach rather than reacting to a situation once it has happened which can be costly and damaging to reputation.

"Consumers must also take steps to prevent attacks from fraudsters, by taking care when disclosing their personal details or following the security tips offered by their online banking service."

Many recruitment agencies in Australia were reluctant to comment on insiders slipping through their security net, but one managing director of an agency based in Melbourne, who chose to be anonymous, said that he did not believe that this was currently a problem in Australia yet.

"I haven't heard of any cases of this happening in Australia yet, and we certainly haven't experienced it in our firm yet. We have heard of individuals targeting companies deliberately to steal data and carry out cybercrime attacks, but not organised gangs yet.

"The best way we can prevent this from happening is to do police checks, but we don't have a policy of doing police checks on everyone. I guess there could be better ways of vetting potential employees."

If this air of unawareness and complacency is common in the whole of Australia, it seems that the financial services could be an open target for organised crime in the future.

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