WORLDWIDE – This month INTERPOL has released a report with regard to patterns of cyber-crime, the online cancer of the age of internet technology, and its evolution during the current pandemic. And the details should make every business, big or small, whether in logistics or otherwise, sit up and take notice.
The report, which can be downloaded here, reveals the upsurge in incidents at a time half of the world or more was in lockdown. One INTERPOL partner alone reported 907,000 spam messages, 737 incidents related to malware and 48,000 malicious URLs in the four-month period from January to April 2020.
Remote working has apparently exacerbated the problem, criminals taking advantage of increased security vulnerabilities as staff work from home on insufficiently secure equipment. This latest report quantifies results from around the globe using data gathered during April and May. Private partners and INTERPOL operators were joined by the Singapore based INTERPOL Cybercrime Threat Response Unit (CTR) and Cyber Fusion Centre (CFC).
The key points of the report are as follows:
Misinformation is another concern for the authorities, the ability to verify the veracity of news items and comment has be eroded by the speedy transfer of fake news between gullible members of the public or those with an agenda. The damage caused by this type of information is incalculable, not helped when senior political figures issue nonsense statements which people accept as fact (witness the witless remarks from the US and Brazilian leaders).
This type of ‘information’ has the potential to cost thousands of lives, as the search for a vaccine continues so already compromised ‘medical’ figures warn of the dangers of protecting oneself against the virus basing the views on opinion, never evidence.
The INTERPOL report details how criminals are developing and boosting attacks ‘at an alarming pace’ and reveals facts such as ‘Cybercrime-as-a-Service’ is being offered on Darknets to potential purchasers giving them an easy route into blackmail and disruption, and it foresees the problems increasing even post Covid.
What is clear is that all businesses, and indeed individuals must be particularly vigilant at this time against a series of threats which are in fact their own type of technological virus.
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