The fast rising screen has blocked physical bank robberies – now we need one to deter cyber crime, says A.Hack
Old-fashioned bank robbery, according to a recent study by the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association, brings very little return on investment.
Despite the Hollywood treatment given to the subject, this branch of the crime industry isn’t well paid or glamorous at all.
Using data from the British Bankers’ Association, they’ve discovered that the value of bank heists is plummeting with the average blag netting £20,331.
One third of robberies yield nothing at all. The average takings per person per successful raid are £12,706.60 in the UK. In the US, where screens are more commonly installed, the average yield is $4,330.
The authors, economists from the Universities of Sussex and Surrey, quantified the elements of a heist, looking at labour costs (research on the bank layout and bribes to insiders) and capital input (guns, jemmies etc.) then itemised and analysed the data.
They found that firearms are a good investment (they increase the average yield) as does the number of people in the gang, although the haul per hood ration does decrease.
“Our evidence suggests that the takings that heists generate appear to be consistent with economic theory,” said Professor Rickman of the University of Surrey. “This is useful information if we are thinking about how such activity may be tackled in the future.”
The best deterrent factor, they found, is a fast-rising security screen. Though these have been around for years, they haven’t been widely adopted.
For obvious reasons, banks are under much greater threat from online raiders these days.
Let’s hope that some canny solution provider is busy working on the cyber equivalent of a fast rising security screen. This is a chance to show the world, using an example everyone will understand, how efficiently the cloud can deliver benefits.
Developers will create an app in a fraction of the time it took for a physical product to be invented and, thanks to the versatility of the cloud, it can be delivered in the time it takes to close down a window.
LINKS
The Royal Statistical Society:
http://www.rss.org.uk
The American Statistical Association:
www.amstat.org
