The Australian Cyber Security Center has released a report that shows just how much more cyber crimes are being committed than in previous years. Australian authorities have found that there has been an increase of 16% in 2017 when compared to 2016. Cyber criminals are taking advantage of the digital era and their methods are getting extremely sophisticated.
While people are more aware of would-be scams and phishing attacks than ever before, the criminals have taken it to a new level. Saying that they’ve changed the game would be an understatement. Many criminals have taken to targeting businesses instead of individuals. Several occasions, according to the ACSC, cyber criminals were able to scam businesses via email fraud.
Companies received fraudulent invoices from what they thought were other companies they currently do business with. Not knowing it was a fake, they followed through with paying the fraudulent invoice, thus completing the scam. They never even know that they were successfully scammed until they are notified of an unpaid invoice by the other, actual business.
There are tons of different ways to suffer a cyber attack and the professionals are working tirelessly to combat the crimes. Australian authorities have formed numerous task forces over the years that are dedicated to cyber security. Some focus on the online drug and weapons trades, while others target scam attacks and hackers.
Businesses throughout Australia continue to report attacks they experience to authorities but many are beginning to complain that not much is being done about them. In many cases, companies file their complaint with authorities and never hear anything back. This doesn’t actually mean authorities are ignoring the cases as they are most likely using the information from the incidents in a different manner to catch said criminals.
