Yesterday, I went to the Get Safe Online summit at Somerset House, London. This annual event brings together security experts and partners from industry, government, civil society and law enforcement.

The speakers included the head of trust and safety at PayPal, his opposite number at HSBC, the head of e-crime at SOCA and Keith Mularski, a supervisory special agent with the FBI who had flown in specially to give a presentation on the sinister world of online criminals, including the infamous DarkMarket site which he himself had helped to bring down earlier this year.

What was striking for me was the extent, scale and organisation behind online crime. Criminality is now the root cause and driver of internet security problems.

At the same time, the speakers (and a subsequent panel discussion) underscored how easy it is to protect yourself. They’re looking for the path of least resistance. It’s much easier to install malware on an unprotected, unpatched PC or to con a naive user. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

For more information

• Read about Get Safe Online Week 2008
• Download the 2008 Get Safe Online report

Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska and would-be Vice President of the USA, had her email account broken into, according to media reports. (Hat tip BBC).

She was using a Yahoo! account. It seems that criminal hackers used publicly available information, such as her date of birth, zip code and other data from online databases to change the password on her account by pretending to be her.

This shows the danger of publishing too much information about yourself online. For example, does your Facebook page need your date of birth, phone number and email address?

Get Safe Online has lots of advice about social engineering, social networking, choosing strong passwords and protecting your privacy.

Nicholas Sarkozy, president of France, has been the victim of an internet bank attack according to media reports today (source: AFP).

It’s interesting that the thieves do not seem to be aware that they were stealing from a high-profile politician. After all, hacking the president’s bank account is likely to attract significant police attention. More likely, he was one victim among many.

Too often, when we talk about internet security, people say that ‘hackers aren’t interested in me. I’m not important’ In reality, internet criminals buy and sell personal details online in large numbers. They buy in bulk. Sarkozy is the exception that proves the rule.