The Crime in a Cyber Attack and a Data Breach
As a data protection officer we are seeing a rise in the number of cyber attacks on organisations. We often find that the fact an actual crime has been committed is sometimes overlooked in the panic and need to recover data and get operations back up and running. According to the National Crime Agency (NCA) cyber crime continues to rise in scale and complexity, affecting essential services, businesses and private individuals. Cyber crime costs the UK billions of pounds, causes untold damage and threatens national security.
Resource: National Crime Agency
The South-East Cyber Crime Unit gives the following about Data Breach Advice and What to Do. They advise that in a breach it may be tempting to search for and download a copy of the data from the Data Breach yourself for reassurance. They strongly recommend against doing this. Aside from ending up in possession of stolen data belonging to others, there are sometimes fake copies of such data circulating on the internet and dark web, containing malicious files (e.g. viruses) that can cause additional damage to your computer / network, online accounts and personal data.
Cyber crimes and data breaches can come from both external and internal sources and may result in financial loss. Reporting the crime, particularly a cyber crime, can help the cyber crime unit identify/track down criminals - you may be a very small, but crucial part of the puzzle! Don't forget that you may need to preserve evidence, so speak to Action Fraud first.
Only 15% of cyber crimes are reported!
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The most common cyber threats include:
- Hacking - including of social media and email passwords
- Phishing - bogus emails asking for security information and personal details
- Malicious software – including ransomware through which criminals hijack files and hold them to ransom
- Distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against websites – often accompanied by extortion
Most cyber attacks could be prevented by taking these basic security steps:
- Choose strong passwords and don’t reuse them for multiple logins
- Install security software such as anti-virus and two-factor authentication. This kind of software is often available for free.
- Keep all security software and operating systems updated (this can be set to update automatically)
Resource: National Crime Agency
The South-East Cyber Crime Unit gives the following about Data Breach Advice and What to Do. They advise that in a breach it may be tempting to search for and download a copy of the data from the Data Breach yourself for reassurance. They strongly recommend against doing this. Aside from ending up in possession of stolen data belonging to others, there are sometimes fake copies of such data circulating on the internet and dark web, containing malicious files (e.g. viruses) that can cause additional damage to your computer / network, online accounts and personal data.
Cyber crimes and data breaches can come from both external and internal sources and may result in financial loss. Reporting the crime, particularly a cyber crime, can help the cyber crime unit identify/track down criminals - you may be a very small, but crucial part of the puzzle! Don't forget that you may need to preserve evidence, so speak to Action Fraud first.
Only 15% of cyber crimes are reported!
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