British consumers lost billions of pounds to online scams and attacks during 2017 as criminals widened their assault across the world.

A new report from Symantec has revealed that 17 million customers were affected by cybercrime in the UK during 2017, equivalent to around a third of the total adult population.

Losses from cybercrime were estimated at totalling £4.6 billion across the UK, with the average victim also losing an average of 14.8 hours (nearly two working days) dealing with the aftermath of cybercrime.

The most common attacks included phishing emails, experienced by 37 per cent of the victims, fraudulent online purchases (20 per cent) and fake technical support scams (over 25 per cent).

In total, the 2017 Norton Cyber Security Insights Report found that £130 billion was stolen from 978 million customers across 20 countries during 2017, showing the true global scale of cyber crime.

The report added that victims of cybercrime appeared to share a similar profile and usage habits, often just being everyday people who own several connected devices. However they often lack complete cyber security awareness, with bad habits such as re-using the same password across all their online accounts (20 per cent of cybercrime victims versus 12 per cent of non-victims).

Interestingly, one in five also said that they believed stealing information online was not as bad as stealing property in ‘real life.’

“Consumers’ actions revealed a dangerous disconnect: Despite a steady stream of cybercrime sprees reported by media, too many people appear to feel invincible and skip taking even basic precautions to protect themselves,” said Nick Shaw, vice president and general manager of Norton, EMEA.

“This disconnect highlights the need for consumer digital safety and the urgency for consumers to get back to basics when it comes to doing their part to prevent cybercrime.”

Local authorities are struggling to manage database software compliance tools due to increasing financial pressure, new research has found.

A study published by software company TmaxSoft has found that tightening budgets mean councils are unable to pay heavy auditing costs and licensing fees.

 In particular, the research has revealed that local authorities are seeing increasing prices for Oracle database solutions and lengthy software licenses coming into place.

The company conducted a Freedom of Information request on more than 75 local authorities in a bid to explore cost and operational burdens imposed by Oracle relational database software.

Over the past few years, local budgets have had their budgets slashed by the central government, which has resulted in many failing to deliver critical public services.

And while auditing software continues to become more expensive and complex to use, councils don’t have the means to employ the right personnel to ensure they’re in compliance with licensing terms.

As a result, many councils may end up operating outside of licensing agreements, and this is likely to affect that way that public data is handled.

TmaxSoft approached 77 councils, and 60 of them responded within the legal timeframe outlined by the Freedom of Information Act.

Of the councils that responded, 92 per cent said they’re currently using Oracle database software. However, as a result of recent austerity, their spend on the software has risen by 20 per cent.

Meanwhile, 20 per cent of UK councils disclosed that they’ve spent more than £100,000 on Oracle products over two years, and 2 per cent said costs have reached £500,000.

Another challenge is that many councils are tied to costly, long-term license agreements. Around 20 per cent of councils said their existing agreement is for over four years, and 43 per cent said it was between one and two years.

Carl Davies, UK CEO of TmaxSoft, said: “The pace of the audits conducted by Oracle must be a concern for local councils.

“It is, of course, the responsibility of the council to make sure that it adheres to the terms of its software licenses.

“But with Oracle auditing just five per cent of councils per year, there is a real risk that some cash-strapped local authorities may be operating outside of the remit of their software licenses without knowing it.

“This could have very expensive ramifications, as councils may find themselves forced to purchase additional, costly licenses from Oracle.

“Many councils find themselves operating within an opaque, rigid licensing system, where they often do not know exactly what they are paying for and how many licenses they need”

He added: “We have seen from our research that, despite the growing number of alternative providers, 92 per cent of the 60 local councils that responded to our Freedom of Information request are still using Oracle relational database software.

“In the era of austerity, where local councils are having to make cuts to all areas of their budgets, it is critical that IT infrastructure deliver value for money for the taxpayer.”

The world’s largest container shipping biz has revealed the losses it suffered after getting hit by the NotPetya ransomware outbreak, and the results aren’t pretty.

The malware surfaced in Ukraine in June after being spread by a malicious update to MeDoc, the country’s most popular accounting software. Maersk picked up an infection that hooked into its global network and shut down the shipping company, forcing it to halt operations at 76 port terminals around the world.

“In the last week of the quarter we were hit by a cyber-attack, which mainly impacted Maersk Line, APM Terminals and Damco,” CEO Soren Skou said in a statement today.

“Business volumes were negatively affected for a couple of weeks in July and as a consequence, our Q3 results will be impacted. We expect that the cyber-attack will impact results negatively by USD 200-300m.”

Admittedly Maersk is massive – it’s responsible for around 15 per cent of the world’s entire shipping network – but that kind of financial damage is close to a record for such an attack. Then again, the company’s entire network was down for days, Skou told the Financial Times.

“It was frankly quite a shocking experience,” said Skou. “Your email goes down, all your address system. We ended up having to use WhatsApp on our private phones. Most business problems, you will have an intuitive idea on what to do. But with this and my skills, I had no intuitive idea on how to move forward.”

Skou said that he decided to take personal charge of the situation, sitting in on IT meetings and getting daily updates on the malware’s progress. He says he learned that there was nothing that could have been done to stop the attack, but he wants to strengthen the company’s systems against further attacks.

Maersk wasn’t the only multinational to be hit by NotPetya. WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency, also took a major hit, as did deliveries firm TNT. While the latter biz hasn’t responded to requests for comment it’s understood to have taken weeks to sort out its infection with a permanent loss of data.