Chief executive of Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab, Eugene Kaspersky, fears many talented IT specialists laid off by companies will be lured by the prospect of big money and a low risk of being caught.

“I’m very afraid that the financial crisis will stimulate these guys,” he told IT Wire. “In times of recession there is obviously more unemployment and this leads to crime. There is no reason to think this won’t happen in the area of cybercrime also.”

Such a surge would come at a difficult time for businesses already struggling to reduce their expenditure on IT. Any cutbacks to security budgets could have disastrous consequences if key systems are compromised.

Kaspersky points to the growing sophistication of Trojans being propagated through the internet as a sign of what is likely to come. Many are designed to steal personal details and then use them to conduct fraudulent financial transactions.

At an international press briefing last week, Kaspersky chief malware expert Vitaly Kamluk demonstrated a rogue Trojan that can identify banking login and password details even when they are entered using a virtual on-screen keyboard.

By creating screen shots of a user’s desktop while a bank account is being accessed, the Trojan can steal all the information needed to conduct a fraudulent transaction without a user being aware.

Kaspersky, who spends considerable time trying to educate both business and individuals on the challenges posed by cybercrime, says such attacks are only going to grow in both number and complexity.

“These guys don’t report their activities to (research firm) IDC,” he says. “It’s very hard know exactly how big the industry is but you can be sure it is going to get a whole lot bigger.”

He says banks and other institutions that are regularly targeted by cyber criminals are also reluctant to discuss the problem, fearful that it will have a negative impact on their corporate reputations.

Rather than tackling the problem head on, Kaspersky says many banks find it easier to “write off” losses, allocating a proportion of their turn-over to pay back customers who fall victim to cybercrimes.

While it is difficult to track the location of cyber criminals, because of the extensive use of proxy servers, it’s believed Russia, Latin America and China are leading the global expansion.

“Unfortunately we have a lot of cyber criminals in Russia and they are very determined people,” says Kaspersky. “But when you look at the total number of talented software engineers then it’s easy to see that there could be a whole lot more.”