Retail crime on the rise

New figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) have found that retail crime increased significantly in 2012. The results, published in the BRC's latest Retail Crime Survey 2012, revealed that retail crime cost UK retailers £1.6b between 2011-12, equivalent to almost 135,000 full-time entry level jobs in retail. This was a 15.6 per cent increase in the value of crime compared with the previous year, with e-crime accounting for 37 per cent of the total cost of crime in the period.

The key components making up the costs of e-crime were identification-related frauds, card and card-not-present and refund frauds.

Commenting on the statistics, Simon Jackson of online protection agency NetNames said that the threats facing today's retailers are changing: "As brands struggle to compete on the high street and leverage the online power channels to target customers as part of a multichannel approach, cyber criminals are also following the move online. Today's brands are at risk of a growing range of threats which include phishing attacks, brand abuse and domain name hijacking. However, the threat of most concern to retailers is that of counterfeit and pirate goods."