Johannesburg - While viruses, worms and Trojans continue to be the preferred weapons of choice for cyber criminals, new forms of fraud are emerging that are making bank cyber fraud even more lucrative than the drug trade.
Stieler van Heerden from Ukuphepha Consulting told the southern African internal audit conference on Monday that the Russian mafia was now making more money from banking fraud than drug cartels were making from their illegal activities.
He says cyber fraud has become a $1 trillion industry, with a survey of 50 multinationals in the US showing they are losing $5.9m a year each.
He says new code infections are able to send spam data to large organisations and internet businesses, while there are moves to encrypt GSM phone networks.
Another major risk is the growth in usage of open source weapons like the Stuxnet virus that is freely available online for download.
"We have a lot of action, but not a lot of measurement to determine the relevance of the action," he said.
He said real world data analysis needs to improve to determine what will reduce infection rates.