FBI’s Annual Report on Cyber Crime states that businesses and individuals have lost more than 3.5 billion to cyber-attacks and those spreading ransomware. The law enforcement agency highlighted in the report that incoming month’s ransomware can take a big toll on victims on a financial note if companies fail to take preventive measures.
According to the Internet Core Competency Certification Crime Report of 2019, cybercrime is seen flourishing in the United States despite the fact that awareness related to its existence and sophistication of security products has increased in North America.
FBI states that last year, over 467,352 complaints were reported by people across United States accounting to 1,300 incidents per day and more than 100,000 in a single year.
“As Cyber Criminals are getting increasingly sophisticated, it is getting tough to spot the red flags from fakes by the victims,” says Donna Gregory, the chief of IC3 (Internet Complaint Center) – a cyber arm of Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Business email frauds, romance or confidence frauds, spoofing were the cyber crimes that topped the charts of FBI’s Annual Cyber Crime report.
Last year, the FBI reports that it has received over 23,700 reports related to the email account compromise and the count is reportedly surging at 14% per year.
Coming to the spread of ransomware- a file-encrypting malware, the FBI states that the crime has evolved and is seen targeting mainly government agencies and companies. Although the number of ransomware attacks decreased last year, the amount of losses yielded through the attacks by companies and individuals is reportedly seen as spiking.
IC3 which started taking complaints on cybercrime from 2015 has been witnessing a surge in the number of crimes says the report. The federal law enforcement agency witnessed $2.7 billion losses in 2018, while the count was just 1 billion the previous year.
IC3 has made it official that since the beginning it has taken around 1.8 million complaints and has witnessed $10.2 billion in losses via cybercrime.
