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The heavyweight names signed up to the petition for a centre for e-crime tracking suggest the government should treat this as a priority, but there are other fundamental changes needed, and the UK could do worse than look overseas for solutions. The US Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, was recently praised by former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, as being "specifically designed to accept reports of people who've been defrauded over the internet, a problem that's particularly difficult to solve with geographical reporting arrangements. IC3 provides an analytical function and informs FBI work, and is linked to the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, which tackles internet and hi-tech crime." Connected thinking? What a revelation.

Finally, as the original Lords report suggested, it could become an obligation on banks and all businesses to report security breaches rather than brush them under the boardroom carpet. As with all crime, if we don't know the extent of the problem, we can do nothing to fix it.