Examples of Financial Crime - Coursework Example

Examples of Financial Crime Financial crime is on the rise with malicious attackers devising ways to counter- attack security measures. The internet provides information on social, technical, and political aspects to financial crime. The problem with the internet is that it provides critical information on financial interests. This makes it a good platform for criminal activity. The essay analyzes the challenges experienced during the governance of practices requiring financial crimes. It provides examples of financial crimes in the current setting. The current existing structures pose limitations in controlling the information pasted on to the internet. Increase in financial crime activities has become widespread, but there is still difficulty in maintaining transparent policies and actions of financial information. The problems faced by financial institutions continue to rise with issues relating to politics, legal, technology and economics arising with time. Examples of Financial Crime Introduction Financial institutions increasingly face challenges in managing cyber-attacks. Malicious attackers are increasingly becoming more sophisticated and widespread in devising methods of financial fraud. Banking institutions in Europe mainly face denial-of-service on a large-scale basis hindering their daily investigations. Institutions that handle regional bank and credit Sacco’s often face challenges in financial security breach. Enemies of the state breach their financial systems to seek for intellectual property and intelligence. Hackers use the security breaches to make political statements to their enemies. Cyber gangs working in crime groups opt for the vice to gain money by stealing finds in accounts or hacking into ATMs. A reduction in technology costs leads to the decrease of barriers implemented to curb cybercrime, providing criminals with cheaper and easier ways to penetrate into financial networks. The growing black market encourages a new generation of wrong doers wishing to breach data services for financial institutions. 1In June 2014, the Bank of England increased its efforts in the protection of the UK’s financial institutions from cybercrime. The testing framework aims at combining government intelligence with security industries assessing the risks. Implementing the new cyber security strategy named CBEST seeks to ease pressure on financial services in England. With this in mind, the study seeks to analyze the financial security of the Bank of England. Management of Financial Crime using Information Systems Financial crime in indicates that both internal and external rely on IT systems to manage information (BBC, 2014). On the financial oriented departments, 75 % of the systems use in-house and outsourced vendors that provide IT systems. The institution uses a small percentage of 12% from outsourced environments. Financial crime reports to using 90% of their financial framework under a secure network. The network policy chosen uses basic to complex strategies to ensure security of data. Departments in the bank work with a written information security policy that documents the rules and regulation of operation. Employees in institutions undergo security awareness training programs to inform them on the new methods of generating information. Financial institutions perform risk management analysis including the trends and risks emerging in the financial sector. Financial institutions go through information security audits conducted by reputable companies to merge the information with their records. Incident monitoring and reporting aids the bank to analyze emerging trends. Credit control departments, however, add features into their frameworks such as comprehensive complication plans to apprehend breach. Use of Security Technologies to curb Financial Crime The internet comes with a supremacy battle of control. Internet protocols that enable its running at the IP and TCP work on a design that separates networks. This enables the separation of hardware implementation and political control.2 The hardware implementation involves differentiation of satellite, wired and radio while political control involves research, consumer, and military usage. Internet censorship is a feature that enables extensive prohibition of explicit information. This information helps in securing information from the rest of internet platforms. The rise of internet censorship originates from political and social boundaries, which are the factors that should be considered before enforcing censorship laws. The state of internet control mechanisms began as a development of internet community protocols that were enforced with minimal intervention. The laws or courts had minimal supervision of the set standards. The main control mechanisms were to threaten temporary closure or complete disconnections.3 According to Fu, Chan, and Chau, filtering in the Great Firewall of China is an example of internet censorship that helps in managing local firewall in the infrastructure of China. Other studies analyze the network topology and censorship platforms across countries. Robert et al related several countries to the autonomous systems (AS). The findings of their study indicate that the traffic passes in a single control point. In 2012, Doh and Teegen analyzed the mechanisms of censorship in different countries around the world with the inclusion of China. Their studies conclude that censorship in China bases on hostname. The relation of these findings to our findings is the evidence it provides to support the findings. 4The main studies by Anderson dedicated its growth to Internet censorship in England. The study included the use of a private IP address in China’s space and found that the network had many hosts on the space. The reports by Briggs and Burke also indicate that the move was politically motivated throttling in the internet space in England. The political link came from a significant and prolonged disruption in the service on periods when Iran experienced economic and political unrest. This topic provides information on the first Iran internet censorship publication. Censorship involves suppressing opinions, ideas and information concerning given content. 5According to Khosrowpour, censorship works along political lines. It is the main determinant of the censored information. The process involves banning some information based on political grounds. Censorship differs from selection, which is used by politicians to intentionally omit information from internet sites. The internet provides opportunities for people to communicate on a global scale. Through the internet, people are able to communicate, make decisions, and get an education. It helps empower people on health, education, politics, and social interaction. 6The process works by synchronizing information through networks and make it accessible via laptops and desktops. This information is also important as it runs through tablets and mobiles. According to Murdoch and Roberts, financial crime occurs unintentional or by restriction. Analysis of Financial Crime Analyzing the literature review indicates that countries that experience financial crime include North Korea, Iran, England, Cuba and Syria. England is one of the countries that applies strict networks on internet financial crime. The countries apply different technologies and policies aimed at controlling information displayed on the internet. The main modes discussed are categorized into the filtering method, attack mode, and target, which provide different levels of digital financial crime. An interesting source on the network depends on the available link, users and nodes. For instance, an attack on the node may consist of DoS, server takedown and domain de-registration. The organization traces and records user activity prior content blocking, to censor or attack users in a network topology. Situations that require financial crime differ with many operators preferring to monitor and record the activities rather than filtering or blocking specified information. The other method used in censoring information is to attack the link on the network. Various techniques apply in attacking the link including DNS tampering, IP filtering or HTTP filtering. The filtering method is commonly used in online financial crime with the method known as IP filtering. The process filters or block content by restricting access to specified IP addresses. England exercises different filtering methods, as they are the least costly in operating traffic analysis. The problem with IP filtering is that it does not provide high accuracy levels since different websites may run on the same IP address. If content from one IP address is blocked, it blocks information from other websites. The process is cheap and simple in implementation as it involves the use of routers synced with the IP addresses to block. Financial Crime Techniques 7The other category consists of using targets that compromise different approaches of technology know how. It censors different networks and devices using various decisions. The diagram above displays the rate to which different financial crimes methods exhibited. Government Involvement Governments have encouraged the adoption of domestic oriented applications such as email, blogging, and anonymous authors. The common experience of financial crime is on pornographic sites. The most difficult sector to apply financial crime restrictions is in the social media where similar services are used to host different sites. These become difficult to monitor causing the prompt of research on network topology and technology behind the financial crime syndicate.8 Prying the network from inside the country is dangerous as different government has different control. Conducting the research came to establishing a small test bed in a country of choice, in this case, England. 9This will be the basis of conducting network measurements. The main aim of the study is to analyze the mechanisms used in filtering information on the internet. To accomplish the investigation, traffic on non-blocked and blocked packets was carried out on different levels. The use of trace-routes will aid in studying the hops in the bank of England’s infrastructure. The primary measurements were completed in two months after the deployment of CBEST, where financial crime was expected to be deployed. The network probe was on one node at the ISP. This revealed that blocking is from a centralized location on the national network. This does not provide a summary of the layering of distribution filtering. 10The study was in two months to counter the England’s mechanism for frequently adjusting their financial crime analysis programs. There are many commercial financial crime prevention technologies available, but are rated in the categories of software and hardware. Software technologies use block and filter content while hardware use devices to classify the flow of packets over the networks. The prevention provides different implications on various departments. To survey the process of financial crime in the bank of England an analysis was taken on the websites linked to Alexa web traffic ranks. The process involved the creation of a crawler of the first 500 websites that fit in 18 different categories set by the research team. The results indicate that the most censored categories are those that contained adult content. The alarming result indicates that 95 % of the sites remain blocked. 11Fifty percent of the total percentage included commonly visited sites. The Art category took the third percentage of the most censored category. The least percentage of censored information came from sites that talked about news and society. Some websites also experience time out when accessed from England. These sites fell under the category of government sanctions such as technology, banking, and others that blocked access from England IP addresses. The probe used the mechanism of HTTP proxy server to work with the client-server communication channel. Financial Crime and Business 12Financial crime through the internet comes with many implications on social inequities. This does not cause harm as that experienced in international trade. Censoring information on online sites can cause discrimination of foreign sites or suppliers. A good example is the withdrawal of Google from China internet space since it did not comply with the financial crime policies in China. This led to a legal battle between Google and the Chinese authorities. The battle ended with Google ending business operations in China. China insisted that Google should comply with the financial crime policies in China, but it affected foreign competition from other countries. Studies at the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) gave conclusions after examining regulations on the World Trade Organization (WTO). The regulations imposed by countries on financial crime do not go well with the organization. The process of blanket internet financial crime brought difficulties in managing information on product sales and organization grow. 13The impact and importance of online financial crime on international trade depends on the policies placed on foreign trading. These two examples are known of cracking the internet communication especially in commencement of CBEST installation. The process led the United States to unrestricted access to the foreign policy on internet restriction. The new doctrine works to cover services news on online spread of financial crime investigation on the internet. Functioning of anti-financial crime technologies The main objective of the anti-financial crime is to have a connection between the censored and the uncensored internet connections on an anonymous platform. This is achieved by using different anti-financial crime principles. 14The first principles are accomplished by having the cost high to block out individuals and as making it a lead in the evolution of technology. The four main approaches used in the anti-financial crime platform includes; speed-based, volume based, new technology-based, and covert channel based. The approaches work with different dimensions that determine the anti-financial crime policy. Friendliness to users: the technology installed should be user friendly as not many users are technological oriented. Scope: involves analyzing how many modes the software uses in communication. Availability: The use of the anti-financial crime technology depends on if the users targeted can access the information. Verification: the software needs to indicate that it is not a monitoring tool used by the government. Security: the platforms need to secure confidential information of an organization. Deniability: this concept analyzes if the software provides information on denying if caught in involvement Performance: the software must not limit the production of products and services of the organization. The normal anti-financial crime system requires components linked to work together. Technologically the system compromises of filters or firewall that runs with manual processes, which restrict the access of given content on the internet. The typical components of an anti-financial crime system works with several processes 1. Analysis of the censored users 2. The analysis of the user software 3. Discover a tunnel agent 4. Connect users with the circumvention tunnels. 5. Protect the communication channels 6. Sync the system to be censor free 7. Encrypt the information so that it does not penetrate the firewall. 8. Ensure the network traffic supports the network 9. Ensure the setup works with the anti-financial crime supporters 10. Access the information from a censored location Transparency in Financial Crime 15In the past, the aspect of internet financial crime was considered futile. Governments that started by censoring the internet content were easily defeated as organizations used routes and damages to go past it. Today, governments take different approaches in ensuring that the techniques adopt democracy and not a dictatorship. Financial crime changes over time, bringing the rise of fights over control by international bodies. The bodies seek to reduce involvement over the internet by the United Kingdom. The process also seeks to find information that reduces the harm that comes with censoring information on the internet. The aim seeks to provide power to other institutions to decentralize governance as they resist efforts in ensuring internet outsourcing. This indicates that most organizations are more organized than the government in making the financial crime issue open. 16Once the society is made comfortable with the financial crime option, it becomes easier to move to other topics such as jurisdiction and the appropriateness of the financial crime technique. Transparency achievement in internet financial crime remains a challenge, as it does not incorporate democracy. Most blocked sites are not disclosed due to reasons that do not form a basis. The main reason is that the blocked sites will have increased attention. 17For this reason, the best option remains putting pressure on the owners to restrict the content displayed on their sites. This reason leaves users with no choice but to reveal the extent to which financial crime is applied on their site and the reasons. Technical studies help in providing information on the process involved in internet financial crime. Knowing the blocked sites or the removed content is necessary as it provides viewers and organizations with the importance of financial crime. Some sites are blocked even if they fall out of the criteria set for financial crime. Over blocking makes, sense when it is applied to avoid criticism, but sometimes it comes as a mistake from zealous interpretations that indicate technical limitations. Separating the two reasons is important to make financial crime relevant to all institutions. The process does not involve a technical approach only but by providing training mechanisms that control the use of internet financial crime techniques. Financial crime becomes a problem when government performs financial crime deliberately. The common way is the use of laws to restrict owners from displaying information on given content. This form of surveillance gives the owners a perception of following the law. Surveillance follows with removal or blocking of content so that people know that activities on the internet go through the monitoring process. 18Measures run under technical limits while the risks of facing punishments keep individuals from breaking the rules. This gives individuals the discipline to access information under the law. Monitoring provides the financial crime programs with censor topics. Micro blogging aids in the identification of the registered site and those that operate outside the law. It comes with importance to ensure that it remains safe to use for children and adults. Managing internet conflicts occur by setting financial crime laws that do not favor any party. Pitfalls and solutions The process of enforcing financial crime prevention strategies may be automated to allow the authorities to control different communication channels. Governments that can monitor the entire population in a country display levels of dictatorship. The study indicates that most governments apply financial crime programs on the internet to target civil societies. 19Governments get supply from western companies with technologies that enable them to run financial crime on the internet. The use of authentication and encryption helps user resist surveillance from financial crime, but the methods are not used for positive reason. Most of the problems arise from setting restrictions that govern distribution of equipment. Some of the problems arise due to difficulty in using the technologies that come with the financial crime prevention software. Organizations that apply the technology are more likely to show relevance and to be of less risk to targeted surveillance. Another pitfall experienced is that western companies relate with authoritarian governments technologies that often exploit the commonly used software. 20The common area relating to encryption usage is the HTTPS web browsing. The initial motivation was to achieve a safe internet system in handling a business. HTTPS now applies to encrypting information on a web mail service. The best security platform in line to mail is the OpenPGP. The advantage of HTTPS is that it is easier to use compared to secure technologies. The program does not require sync with extra software and users do not realize its difference to the HTTP webmail platform. Using the HTTPS platform is a bonus for the organization as they avoid monitoring from the government. This comes with the disadvantage of lacking protection from the web server. Control mechanisms over the use of HTTPS have increased with implementation of certification authorities (CAs). The CAs helps in identifying that the owner of the domain name in fact runs the site of connection. They have the power to impersonate an internet site to users. This reason makes CAs targets from criminals who fraudulently access vague certificates. The fact that these operations occur under the knowledge of the government remains a concern for web users. 21Experts on the information seek to find ways to improve the weaknesses that come with installing CA models. CA decentralization has encouraged competition, decreasing their costs, but has increased insecurity among their usage. A small security compromise means that several website stand the risk of facing criminal activities. The experts work with economic and legal forces that discuss improving CAs as a bid to reduce the damage that may occur. Solutions include ensuring CAs indicate transparency in how they show certificates and credentials in web browsers. This enables communities on the internet to detect criminals before they are robbed. Detecting criminals also enables the CA to be blacklisted on browsers preventing further damage. Facing blacklist is a common use of browser application that will destroy the CAs model in business. These measures are effective in maintaining transparency on the internet. Conclusion The works examine the position of financial crime. The research analyses where and how the process of financial crime happens. The measurement of hypothesis analyzed 18 websites that face financial crime. The results indicate that understanding financial crime in organizations helps in analyzing the counter measures of financial crime. It is also vital to analyze the financial crime resistance program. The hardware implementation involves differentiation of satellite, wired and radio while political control involves research, consumer, and military usage. Internet financial crime is a feature that enables extensive prohibition of explicit information. This information helps in securing information from the rest of internet platforms. The process involves removal of information from the internet or restricting access. The process links to a legislative process that limits the activities of individuals. Different societies have different forms of financial crime, which are made effective with threats and risks of violating the financial crime rule. Financial crime involves suppressing opinions, ideas and information concerning given content. Financial crime works along political lines. It is the main determinant of the censored information. The process involves banning some information based on political grounds. Financial crime differs from selection, which is used by politicians to omit information from internet sites. Situations that require financial crime differ with many operators preferring to monitor and record the activities rather than filtering or blocking specified information. The other method used in censoring information is to attack the link on the network. Various techniques apply in attacking the link including DNS tampering, IP filtering or HTTP filtering. The filtering method is commonly used in online financial crime with the method known as IP filtering. The process filters or block content by restricting access to specified IP addresses. China exercises different filtering methods, as they are the least costly in operating traffic analysis. The problem with IP filtering is that it does not provide high accuracy levels since different websites may run on the same IP address. If content from one IP address is blocked, it blocks information from other websites. The process is cheap and simple in implementation as it involves the use of routers synced with the IP addresses to block. The rise of internet financial crime originates from political and social boundaries as to the factors that should be considered before enforcing financial crime laws. The aim seeks to provide power to other institutions to decentralize governance as they resist efforts in ensuring internet outsourcing. This indicates that most organizations are more organized than the government in making the financial crime issue open. Once the society is made comfortable with the financial crime option, it becomes easier to move to other topics such as jurisdiction and the appropriateness of the financial crime technique. Transparency achievement in internet financial crime remains a challenge, as it does not incorporate democracy. Most blocked sites are not disclosed due to reasons that do not form a basis. The main reason is that the blocked sites will have increased attention. For this reason, the best option remains putting pressure on the owners to restrict the content displayed on their sites. This reason leaves users with no choice but to reveal the extent to which financial crime is applied to their site and the reasons. Technical studies help in providing information on the process involved in internet financial crime. Knowing the blocked sites or the removed content is necessary as it provides viewers and organizations with the importance of financial crime. Some sites are blocked even if they fall out of the criteria set for financial crime. The state of internet control mechanisms began as a development of internet community protocols that were enforced with minimal intervention. The laws or courts had minimal supervision of the set standards. The main control mechanisms were to threaten temporary closure or complete disconnections. 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