The National Crime Agency (NCA) and its subset, the National
Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) have safeguarded over one million victims
of cyber crime, according to official figures.
The data, contained in the NCA’s recently published annual report and
accounts for the most recent financial year (FY 20-21), has
been analysed by Griffin Law, the niche
litigation practice.
The analysis revealed that the NCA had coordinated 490 ‘prevent’
interventions against individuals at risk of becoming future
cyber offenders, and they took down or suspended over 270
criminally controlled websites.
Furthermore, the NCCU’s operational activity had also surged in
the last financial year. The report revealed that they had
actively pursued over 34 per cent of all cyber ‘disruptions’ in
FY 20-21, compared to just 13 per cent in FY 19-20 – a nearly
three-fold increase year over year.
The report revealed that a large quantity of the operational
activity recorded this year was in relation to a five-week
NCCU-led and nationwide investigation into WeLeakInfo[DOT]com.
This resulted in the arrests of 21 cyber criminals who had paid
to access WeLeakInfo, which hosted 12 billion stolen credentials,
in order to download personal data for use in further offences.
In addition to the arrests, Cyber Prevent Officers also visited a
further 60 individuals to warn them to cease and desist from
criminal activity.
Also, in April 2020 during the height of the pandemic, the NCA
launched a high-priority investigation into an email sent to NHS
England, demanding £10 million by a set deadline, or an explosive
package would be left at one of its hospitals. The investigation
led to the arrest of an Italian national for attempted extortion,
and he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in February
2021.
The Agency also increased audience exposure to ‘prevent’
messaging around cyber crime, more than doubling this relative to
2019-20. This was achieved through a range of cyber ‘prevent’
campaigns, including a four-stranded Google AdWords campaign and
the popular online game ‘CyberLand’, designed to introduce key
cyber security concepts to children.
Additionally, the NCCU issued 123 target packages against the
previous years 115. This was achieved alongside an increase in
Triage, Incident Coordination and Tasking logs recorded.
Cyber prevention methods against attacks targeting the NCA itself
had also improved in the most recent financial year, and in
2020-21, seven Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were
prevented, resulting in 0 downtime, compared with 39 attacks and
around 3 and a half minutes of downtime in 2019-20.
Donal Blaney, Founder, Griffin Law said the NCA
‘deserves credit’ for its performance but needs to do more to
protect victims from online harassment, fraud and cyber stalking.
“Too many cyber crime victims are left without hope, and the NCA
needs to commit far more resources to taking this growing threat
more seriously,” said Blaney.
Cyber expert Edward Blake, Area Vice President EMEA for Absolute Software said,
“The NCA is doing a fantastic job in the fight against cyber
crime, providing significant support to organisations at a time
when cyber threats are surging due to the chaos of the pandemic.
However, the figures in this report underline the very risk cyber
criminals pose to businesses, particularly with hybrid working
models on the rise.
Blake continued, “In this new era of remote and flexible working,
it’s inevitable that organisations will see a rise in lost or
stolen devices, which will contain critical data. It’s therefore
vital to ensure the right systems are in place to track, freeze
and wipe items like laptops, to keep data out of the hands of
fraudsters.”
Email security specialist Tim Sadler, CEO, Tessian said,
“This report highlights the harsh reality that
cybercrime continues to boom. Credential theft, in particular, is
revealed as a lucrative business for cybercriminals today, given
that these pieces of data can open the door to further crime.
It's, therefore, so important that people are using strong
passwords and two-factor authentication to access their accounts
and are aware of the ways their data and credentials could be
stolen and used against them in phishing or social engineering
attacks, for example. These are simple preventative steps to help
avoid falling victim to cyber crime.”
Chris Ross, SVP International for Barracuda Networks said:
“The NCA is playing a critical role in the fight against cyber
crime, providing education, awareness and pursuing online
attackers in an effort to bring them to justice.
“Whilst this report demonstrates that huge progress is being
made, the fact is that sophisticated ransomware attacks on
businesses and public sector organisations are on the rise. From
universities to hospitals and local councils, any organisation
which holds valuable public data appears to be fair game to cyber
criminals. According to Cyber Ventures, unfortunately, every 11
seconds an organisation will fall victim to a ransomware attack.
Hackers can strike through email, websites, and applications, all
of which require full cyber protection. Failure to have these
systems in place and train employees to spot potential threats,
could lead to cyber criminals obtaining and encrypting data,
paralysing businesses and critical national infrastructure.”
