A Russia-backed proposal for an international treaty on cybercrime has failed to win sufficient support at the United Nations.

"A growth in legitimate cross-border computing, such as cloud computing, has been accompanied by a growth in cross-border crime and led to calls for international laws to be brought up to speed," writes Computer Weekly's Mark Ballard. "But talks at the UN last week were unable to reconcile differences between developing countries and the most advanced capitalist countries, led by the EU, US and Canada."

"The UN did make a firm commitment for developed countries to step up the assistance they gave developing countries to build resources to tackle cybercrime and bring national legislation up to date," Ballard writes. "There was unanimous agreement that this must be done urgently."

Click here to read the Computer Weekly article.