Fake hardware has been seized by a City of London Police intellectual property crimes unit, following a recent raid in Kent.

The counterfeit networking equipment, worth at least £300,000, is believed to have been manufactured by organised criminals imitating the high-quality hardware of IT giant Cisco.

Small form-factor pluggable transceivers were recovered, which are used to convert optical data to conventional electrical signals as part of fibre-optic networks. 

Police believe the risks of organised criminal gangs being caught transporting imitation IT hardware are lower than for drugs or firearms, and that only technically-trained specialists would be able to distinguish counterfeit technology from the real thing.

Although no evidence of cyber-security intrusions have so far been found, engineers from Cisco stressed that small items like these could easily find their way into a business or public-sector supply chain, become mixed up with genuine network hardware, or fail due to low-quality manufacture.

Customers who suspect they may have encountered counterfeit items should isolate the hardware in question from other devices and report their suspicions to IT staff.

Lineal are a Cisco Select Partner – for hardware advice and support, please contact our team today: 01271 375999