Cyber Crime

Cyber crime is an ever increasing threat within the UK. The cost of cyber crime is estimated to be costing the UK economy billions of pounds per year, and the costs to individuals and businesses are often staggering.

Details about the Regional Cyber Crime Unit in the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit can be found in the About Us page. They are a team that works both reactively and proactively on significant cyber crime investigations pursuing cyber criminals.

The unit also has two project teams. The first is the Cyber Prevent Team which is a national network led by the NCA. Their aim is to prevent young people from falling into cyber crime through education and awareness. Secondly is the Cyber Protect Team who, coordinated by the City of london Police are dedicated to protecting the public and businesses from becoming victims of cyber crime. For further details on Prevent and Protect, please visit their webpages here: Prevent     Protect

Cyber crime can be split into two broad categories:

Cyber-dependent crimes

Also known as ‘pure’ cyber crimes are offences that can only be committed using a computer, computer networks or other forms of information communications technology (ICT). An example of a cyber-dependent crime is gaining unauthorised access into someone’s computer network, this can also be called ‘hacking’.

Cyber-enabled crimes

Such as fraud, the purchasing of illegal drugs and child sexual exploitation can be conducted on or offline, but online may take place at unprecedented scale and speed.

Examples of cyber crime include:

1: Unauthorised access – this involves gaining access into someone’s computer network without their permission, and then taking control and/or taking information from other people’s computers. Examples may include accessing the secure area on the school’s computer network and looking for test paper answers or trying to change test scores.

2: Making, supplying or obtaining malware (malicious software), viruses, spyware, botnets and Remote Access Trojans is illegal. These programmes allow criminals to get into other people’s computers to carry out illegal activities. ‘Pranking’, by remotely accessing a friends computer when they don't know you are doing it and messing around is still illegal.

3: Carrying out a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack or 'booting'. A DDoS attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with internet traffic from multiple sources. ‘Online service’ could be a large website or an individual internet user. Booting someone offline whilst playing online games may seem like a harmless joke, but is still illegal.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The NCSC is making the UK one of the safest places in the world to live and do business online.

The NCSC was set up to help protect our critical services from cyber attacks, manage major incidents, and improve the underlying security of the UK Internet through technological improvement and advice to citizens and organisations. Their vision is to help make the UK the safest place to live and do business online.

The NCSC support the most critical organisations in the UK, the wider public sector, industry and SMEs. When incidents do occur, they provide effective incident response to minimise harm to the UK, help with recovery, and learn lessons for the future.

More specifically, the NCSC:
•understands cyber security, and distils this knowledge into practical guidance made available to all
•responds to cyber security incidents to reduce the harm they cause to organisations and the wider UK
•uses industry and academic expertise to nurture the UK’s cyber security capability
•reduces risks to the UK by securing public and private sector networks

Launched in October 2016, the NCSC has headquarters in London and brings together expertise from CESG (the information assurance arm of GCHQ), the Centre for Cyber Assessment, CERT-UK, and the Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure.

By building on the best of what they already have the NCSC provides a single point of contact for SMEs, larger organisations, government agencies and departments. They also work collaboratively with other law enforcement, defence, the UK’s intelligence and security agencies and international partners.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Action Fraud is the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime where you should report fraud if you have been scammed, defrauded or experienced cyber crime; report it by calling 0300 123 2040, alternatively visit the Action Fraud website.