Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent online and digital fraud.

The Government is working with industry to close down the vulnerabilities that fraudsters exploit. This is a shared endeavour between government, regulators, law enforcement and the private sector, with the Joint Fraud Taskforce (JFT) leading work to tackle the fraud threat collectively.

On 14 September new rules under the second Payment Services Directive, known as Strong Customer Authentication, came into effect. These rules set out how banks and payment services providers verify their customers' identity or validate specific payment instructions. These measures will strengthen the authentication of electronic payments and help to limit Card Not Present fraud. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have agreed to give firms up to 18 months to fully implement the Strong Customer Authentication rules.

The industry-led Confirmation of Payee scheme is due to be introduced in early 2020. This scheme will make it harder for fraudsters to trick victims into sending money by impersonating a legitimate organisation. The scheme will check that names on accounts match those of the intended recipient and provide the customer with a warning where it does not.

The National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC) Active Cyber Defence (ACD) initiative aims to protect the UK from high-volume commodity attacks that affect people’s everyday lives. ACD seeks to protect people in the UK from the harm caused by online attacks. The NCSC has delivered advice and guidance to the UK economy and wider society, and tools like ACD are designed to stop many malicious emails and links from reaching their targets.

The Government continues to boost the law enforcement capabilities of the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU), supported by dedicated funding for specialist cyber units in all 43 local forces.

The Government is also undertaking a Serious and Organised Crime (SOC) review led by Sir Craig Mackey QPM. The review will cover the powers, capabilities, governance and effectiveness of funding across the policing and law enforcement landscape, including the NCA and the wider justice system, and will make recommendations that should be delivered through the 2020 spending review to strengthen the SOC system.