Bank clerks, computers and crime : an assessment of the different types of risk that banks face with regard to computers and crime

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the changes that have occurred in the banking industry during the period at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s to assess the impact that they had on the attitudes and opinions of bank clerks. The main concern of the research was the banks’ employees’ attitudes to crimes such as computer crime.

To achieve this, two major pieces of research were conducted by the author - one in the banking industry, and another conducted via Internet to reach a cross section of computer users. The results of these surveys were used to evaluate the risks that the banking industry currently faces both from external and internal forces.

These two pieces of work may be analysed to assess the potential for computer crime in the banking industry. The bank employee survey aims to develop a motivation model which draws on the work of Fishbein. This model maps the possible factors involved in the attitude of employees to crime and unacceptable behaviour in the banking industry. The computer survey gathers information regarding computer users’ opinions towards the act of cracking and other acts of computer misuse. The banking survey develops a profile of the average bank employee whilst the computer user survey develops a profile of a cracker. These two profiles tend to indicate that the risk of more sophisticated computer crimes being committed by bank employees against their employers is slim.

During the evaluation of the risks that the banks face, consideration has been given to the phenomenon of white collar crime and the associated topic of fraud - both of which represent a threat to the financial world.