The number of cyber-crimes is not as big as “ordinary” crimes. But the after effects of cyber-crime may be huge. Cyber criminality can impact on activities that are critical to all society, the police is warning.
Cyber-crime is usually international and well organized. The risk of being caught is low, and criminals often have a good time to destroy the tracks and evidences. Organizations can lose tens of thousands of euros, and sometimes even millions. In addition, victims of cyber-crime do not always report the crimes.
A typical form of online spoofing is phishing. For example, criminal contact the company and ask the employee to click on a fake page requesting critical IDs.
A scammer can even hack into the email, and simply follow the traffic until he knows how things are typically handled. Then the scammer writes an email to the financial manager and asks to transfer of the money. Everything looks real, and the scam may not be noticeable in advance.
Cheaters can also target organizations and associations. The amounts of money are smaller, but the situation is the same as for companies: the money they once lost may never be founded again.
If you notice that you have been cheated, you should immediately contact your bank and police. If the scam is reported within 24 hours, there is still a small chance that the bank may freeze the money transfer. If it takes longer than 24 hours, it will be hard to catch the scammer.
Generally, criminals seek financial gain. Maybe the company has information that could be resold by the criminals. Maybe a patent is interesting. Criminals may also hit companies that have something to do with national crisis resilience.
The police recommend that companies and organizations think for a moment about what could be in interests of criminals. Which kind of information criminals might seek? What should be protected in your company? According to it, models and working methods should be developed and resources can be properly allocated.
It is very important that victims of cyber-crime report the crime. Only in this way can crimes be investigated, criminals brought to justice and lessons learned.