Back in April I wrote about the threat of cyber-crime and the new challenges we faced, considering almost overnight a huge number of businesses were suddenly operating remotely. Many with their employees working from the comfort of their own homes, or in some cases, and much like mine, the not-so-comfortable kitchen table.
Back then the latest figures already showed a loss of over £2 million for Covid-19 related reports of fraud and cyber-crime. 8 months later, that figure stands at over £15 million. The threat over Covid-19 scams hasn’t gone away and I suspect will still be around for some time to come.
Focusing more on the figures for cyber-crime and fraud this year, covering the period from May to November, across the south west there have been a total of 15,989 reports, resulting in £64.1 million loss. More specifically within Wiltshire we’ve seen 2,195 reports which has resulted in £7.3 million lost by victims. Comparing these figures with the same time frame in 2019 it shows reports are up 251% and loss has risen by 92.1%. While it’s likely not all of that is related to the shift to home working, I would guess that at least some of it is.
I won’t go into all the working from home guidance but if you do want some help with securing your systems then take a look at the National Cyber Security Centre guidance for Working From Home.
One of the other things that I mentioned was a new service that had just launched, the Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS) from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). Since then it’s safe to say the service has been busy. As of the 31 October the number of reports received stand at more than 3.6 million. These reports have helped with the removal of 18,071 scams and 39,313 URL’s that were involved with malicious activity and the service has also helped highlight commonly reported suspicious emails and methods used, enabling law enforcement to raise awareness.
As the year has gone by and we’ve all adapted to different practices I’m sure many of you would have improved on cyber security, or at least realised you may need to. If you now have employees using remote access, your network has a bigger attack surface. Unfortunately, cyber criminals also know this and will have exploited it. Ransomware remains a big threat to organisations and we’ve seen different sectors targeted. Most recently alerts have been issued by the NCSC for the academia and education sectors. However, over the year, as well as targeted attacks, there are also many who become victims in untargeted attacks and the risk of this has likely increased because we all have been spending much more time online. We have dealt with several local cases here in Wiltshire.
Help is always out there and the NCSC mitigating malware and ransomware guidance is a great place to start. Raising awareness of cyber security within your organisation, whether you’re a micro business or a large organisation, is vital to keeping your network secure. Your people can have the power to be the strongest part of your defence.
We can help you raise that awareness with impartial advice and guidance delivered through presentations, workshops and discussions. If you would like some help, please feel free to get in touch and don’t worry, it won’t cost anything. Email the Digital Investigations & Intelligence team - DIIU@wiltshire.pnn.police.uk
Your cyber security is an important part in keeping your business safe. With many demands on your time, it might be hard to set some aside to take a good look at it with always having to adjust to new challenges. However, if you’re suddenly locked out or all your data gets encrypted, it’s going to be a significant problem. But just doing simple basic steps such as setting strong passwords, enabling 2 Factor Authentication and keeping hardware and software up to date will go a long way to keeping you and your systems and data secure.
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