I think we’ve all now seen spurious emails promising us financial reward for allowing a few million dollars to pass through our accounts from a deceased African notary or emails from banks asking me to change our passwords.

I think most would agree that the scammers who perpetrate this sort of content are gradually upping their game and the emails are becoming increasingly focused and less easy to differentiate from the real thing (not that I get many real emails offering me money from dead African leaders). Cyber criminals are constantly morphing and refining their approaches, and whilst many of us pick up on them for what they are, the sheer brute force of numbers involved will catch out a significant proportion unawares.

However what we often seem to overlook is that it is not just us as individuals who are at risk from criminals operating over the ether - what about commerce? Specifically what about our small businesses who are already struggling to make a good honest living?

e-Crime Wales is an organisation that is formed to help get Welsh business up to speed and recognise the threat against their livelihoods and put in the necessary technology and processes to protect themselves.

e-Crime Wales are having their annual Summit next week at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, and for anyone who involves ‘e’ in their business in anyway it is a must in my opinion. If you can’t make it to Newport, don’t worry. It’s being webcast live (register to receive details) by live webcasting specialist MultiStream.

I understand that registration has been brisk, as the event is deliberately designed to dovetail to the European Regional Information Society Conference 2008 (eris@ 2008 follows directly after the eCrime Wales summit 2008) as it isn’t Wales alone that faces the significant risk posed to economic growth by eCrime, and other countries are looking to see how Wales is leading by example.