BRC launches student competition on retail cyber crime
The British Retail Consortium has launched a new cyber security challenge for students.
The organisation is inviting students at UK higher education institutions to participate in a paper contest on ‘cyber security risks facing the UK retail industry’, with a focus on how to tackle them.
The challenge invites students to put forward new ideas on how government, law enforcement and industry should work together to tackle the main cyber security threats facing retail in the UK.
Entries will be judged by a panel of leading cyber security scholars from Imperial College, London, UCL, and King’s College, London.
Successful entrants will be awarded prizes totalling £800 with the winner of the competition also given the opportunity to present their paper to members of the BRC’s Fraud and Cyber Security Group. In addition, their work will be printed in the BRC’s membership magazine, The Retailer.
Hugo Rosemont, crime and security policy advisor at the BRC, said: “Today we’re posing a new challenge around a pressing issue and we think that students across the country will rise to it. Working closely with partners in academia, this initiative has been designed to provide an opportunity to encourage a future generation of cyber security leaders to engage with issues of rapidly increasing importance to the UK.”
The BRC said an estimated 53% of reported fraud in the retail industry is cyber-enabled, which represents a total direct cost of around £100 million to UK businesses.
The competition forms part of the BRC’s campaign on cyber security. The organisation recently developed a cyber security ‘toolkit’ for retailers that was launched by Home Office Minister Sarah Newton earlier this month.
