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The impact of 5G on identity theft

A few weeks ago Chancellor, Sajid Javid, announced that he is planning to invest £5bn in the UK’s modern infrastructure revolution to prepare the country for 5G and all the benefits that will go with it.

The 5th generation mobile network is not only faster than previous iterations (around 100 times faster), it will also consign buffering, bandwidth issues and coverage outages to history. 5G means that autonomous cars, VR, connected home products and the Internet of Things will become the norm.

It has been suggested that by 2025 40 per cent of the global population will be accessing 5G and that each person in the UK will have an average of six connected devices. From smartphones and tablets through to wearables and wifi enabled heating, fridges, washing machines etc. The average connected person in the world (about 75% of the total population at that time) will have a digital data engagement over 4,900 times per day, about once every 18 seconds and the IoT devices generating much of this data will generate over 90 zettabytes (ZB) of data in 2025 and the total amount of digital data generated will grow from the 33 ZB a year currently to 175 ZB.

Experts warn that the proliferation of data traffic and mobile IoT connectivity comes with a significant amount of risk that should be addressed before 5G is deployed on a large scale. Addressing these concerns will require forward-thinking designs that anticipate and prepare for threats and build effective security features into the design of 5G networks rather than attempting to address such issues as they arise. However, most agree that this is unlikely to happen and that the number of data breaches will rise exponentially. This means that more personal information will be sold over the dark web resulting in more cases of identity fraud – which is currently one of the fastest growing crimes due to its relative ease. Until 5G-ready security solutions are developed it will be important for organisations particularly susceptible to fraud, such as credit providers and retailers to protect themselves against the expected rise in fraudulent orders and applications.

 For further information about how we can protect against deceased identity fraud please don’t hesitate to contact us.