Just a year after it was submitted to a high-profile cyber attack, the European Union’s emissions trading system has fallen prey to online fraudsters.

Commenting on fraudster hackers forcing the temporary closure of the pioneering system, William Beer, director of PwC division, OneSecurity, said: "Clearly, the hackers have exposed a significant lack in information security standards across international registries, so it’s obvious that the European Commission will have to mandate much tighter security measures that all member states will need to adhere to.

With the exception for allocation and surrender of allowances in all EU ETS registries, the EU took the decision to suspend transactions until at least 19:00 CET Wednesday 26 January 2011 to ward off recurring security breaches.

The EU said in a statement: “The incidents over the last weeks have underlined the urgent need for all registries to ensure that these measures are speedily implemented. The Commission will make further announcements early next week and will work to ensure that this transitional measure can be lifted swiftly for all those registries with adequate security measures. The Commission will proceed to determine together with national authorities what minimum security measures need to be put in place before the suspension of a registry can be lifted.”

Full operation of the trading system, however, is not now expected until after this date.

"The Commission put the size of the theft at as much as €30m,” comments PwC’s Beer. “With the level of disruption caused, any investment in prevention would be relatively small in comparison to the size of the loss. Investment in security measures can pay for itself many times over and can help in protecting corporate reputation as well as reducing incidents of theft, loss and fraud.”

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