Cyber Crime
What is Cyber Crime?
The crime that involves and uses computer devices and Internet, is known as cybercrime. Cybercrime can be committed against an individual or a group; it can also be committed against government and private organizations. It may be intended to harm someone’s reputation, physical harm, or even mental harm. Just like regular crime, it also exists on the Internet. Here are some examples of Cyber Crime:
- Identity Theft
- Online Predators
- BEC (“Business Email Compromise”)
- Ransomware
- Stealing of sensitive intellectual property
Increasing Crime
Cyber Crime has been increasing regularly every year. Why is Cyber Crime on the rise? Here are some reasons:
- Cyber Crime is easy to accomplish
- Low risks of getting caught
- For little work there is often high returns
- Attackers can target thousands of victims
- Money laundering is easier with Cryptocurrencies
Challenges like identify theft can have significant consequences on an individual, causing not only the potential of financial losses but also a lot of personal grief. The Internet offers many services to facilitate money laundering, usually making it a trivial process. As money is exchanged in cryptocurrency, services such as tumblers make it hard to track the money. Tumblers are services which split up cryptocurrency transactions and forward the money through many accounts, with different values, for thousands of people, making them hard to track.
Cyber Criminals
Who are Cyber Criminals? It can be anyone, but let us discuss some common ones we see in the media all the time:
- State-sponsored groups targeting organizations in other countries
- Hacking Groups out to target companies to make them pay ransom
- Kids in their rooms doing illegal hacking
Note: Cryptocurrency is money represented in digital form instead of physical. There are many different Cryptocurrencies, some very widespread like Bitcoin, and others smaller and unknown to most people. These currency models relies on strong cryptography and public ledger systems to keep track of transactions and how much currency is on the market.
Catching Cyber Criminals
Cyber Criminals can stay anonymous with trivial means, and typically easy to avoid getting caught. When attackers do get caught, it is often because of mistakes made by the attackers themselves, for example as a result of becoming complacent. There is also a great deal of potential for law-enforcement to use caught cyber criminals to rat out others in the industry.
Law enforcement do, however, have many challenges in tracking down cyber-crime. You might see attack traffic coming in from a system residing in UK, and when taking down this system, you realize it was being remotely controlled by e.g. another system in India. Cooperating with law-enforcements across borders, you might be able to get to the system in India, but only to realize it was again remotely controlled through e.g. Pakistan.
Types of Cybercrime
Let us now discuss the major types of cybercrime −
Hacking
It is an illegal practice by which a hacker breaches the computer’s security system of someone for personal interest.
Unwarranted mass-surveillance
Mass surveillance means surveillance of a substantial fraction of a group of people by the authority especially for the security purpose, but if someone does it for personal interest, it is considered as cybercrime.
Child pornography
It is one of the most heinous crimes that is brazenly practiced across the world. Children are sexually abused and videos are being made and uploaded on the Internet.
Child grooming
It is the practice of establishing an emotional connection with a child especially for the purpose of child-trafficking and child prostitution.
Copyright infringement
If someone infringes someone’s protected copyright without permission and publishes that with his own name, is known as copyright infringement.
Money laundering
Illegal possession of money by an individual or an organization is known as money laundering. It typically involves transfers of money through foreign banks and/or legitimate business. In other words, it is the practice of transforming illegitimately earned money into the legitimate financial system.
Cyber-extortion
When a hacker hacks someone’s email server, or computer system and demands money to reinstate the system, it is known as cyber-extortion.
Cyber-terrorism
Normally, when someone hacks government’s security system or intimidates government or such a big organization to advance his political or social objectives by invading the security system through computer networks, it is known as cyber-terrorism.
Cyber Security
Cyber security is a potential activity by which information and other communication systems are protected from and/or defended against the unauthorized use or modification or exploitation or even theft. Likewise, cyber security is a well-designed technique to protect computers, networks, different programs, personal data, etc., from unauthorized access.
All sorts of data whether it is government, corporate, or personal need high security; however, some of the data, which belongs to the government defense system, banks, defense research and development organization, etc. are highly confidential and even small amount of negligence to these data may cause great damage to the whole nation. Therefore, such data need security at a very high level.
How to Secure Data?
Let us now discuss how to secure data. In order to make your security system strong, you need to pay attention to the following −
- Security Architecture
- Network Diagram
- Security Assessment Procedure
- Security Policies
- Risk Management Policy
- Backup and Restore Procedures
- Disaster Recovery Plan
- Risk Assessment Procedures
Once you have a complete blueprint of the points mentioned above, you can put better security system to your data and can also retrieve your data if something goes wrong.
