Police havelaunched a facility which provides businesses with the opportunity to report cybercrime online.
Any business can now go to the PSNI website www.psni.police.uk and log details about cybercrime by clicking on an icon on the homepage.
The facility is solely for the business community.
Private individuals should continue to report online criminal activity to police in person or by phone or, if it relates to fraud, to Action Fraud.
Businesses seeking to report fraud should continue to contact Action Fraud. This portal is solely for cybercrime.
Business users will be directed from the cybercrime icon to an online reporting facility where they can provide details of an incident or their concerns.
If it is the report of a crime, the report will be assessed by police and appropriate action taken. If it relates to a concern about general online activity affecting a business, then police will use the report to inform their overall knowledge and understanding of cybercrime issues and their responses to them.
Detective Chief Inspector Douglas Grant, from Organised Crime Branch, said the trial facility would allow the business community to make reports quickly and discretely so that police could respond accordingly.hrough engagement with the business community.
He added: “We would encourage reports about computer malware, ransom ware, network intrusion, denial of service attacks and anything which is posing a threat or causing concern to businesses.
“This is a growing area of criminal activity and it is important that police are aware of it so that we can prevent and detect crime. At present, it is difficult to be precise about the full extent of the problem. However there are indications that it is increasing.”
DCI Grant concluded: “Reporting is vital to enable police and law enforcement colleagues to understand the nature and scale of threats being experienced locally so that we can take appropriate action. The facility will operate for a number of months before being evaluated by police in consultation with business representatives.”
Three Northern Ireland-based examples include:
• A business was in regular contact with a customer in Europe via emails. They were made aware from the customer that £100,000 had been transferred to them for a piece of machinery.
The business checked but had not received the money. Examination of the emails at both companies revealed that they had been corresponding with a person who had inserted themselves between the businesses to intercept their communications.
This is known as a ‘man in the middle’ attack. This was done by adding an extra letter to the email address e.g. @equipment.com becomes @equiipment.com (note two ii). The money was then diverted to illicit bank accounts.
• A company director tried to log in to its bank account and a message appeared saying the site was being updated.
He tried several times but could not get in and only managed to log on to the account using a different computer device.
It was at this stage that he saw four transactions had been transferred out of the account worth over £70,000.
The bank was able to stop most of the transactions. Trojan malware had been deployed onto the company’s computer which had been accessed by clicking on an unexpected email containing an attachment often purporting to be an invoice.
• A company with a major online presence was subjected to an attack known as ransom ware which involved their computer systems being infected with malware known as crypto locker.
A pop up window was displayed and requested 5 bitcoins be paid to restore their systems. This attack happened despite the company having firewalls and malware detection in place. It resulted in a substantial loss of data which almost resulted in the company going out of business.
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