While a company may be on shaky moral ground around enabling criminals by giving them money, it would be unlikely to face punishment for paying a ransom and then reporting it to law enforcement. While reporting may not help remediate the individual incident a company has suffered, there may be benefits in the longer term.
As the recent takedown of the GozNym criminal network showed, law enforcement can work with foreign counterparts to stop organized cybercrime gangs, which can help reduce the number of attacks your business faces. Konia says that the likes of the FBI are large federal agencies with lot of resources and a lot of experience in this field, and can be useful to have onside. I know that when we have had clients contact law enforcement, and the FBI in particular, they have given some very interesting insights, assistance and knowledge.
They can compel the disclosure of data for an internet service provider. They can work with foreign counterparts. They may be able to secure reporting extensions, in some cases. If an organization discovers evidence of an ongoing business email compromise attack, for example, informing law enforcement may help shut that down before too much damage is done.
At the Mansion House event, Commander Karen Baxter, national coordinator for economic crime at the City of London Police, urged businesses to report crimes to aid wider investigations. A less direct benefit is that it can help with incident recovery on the insurance and compliance side.
While both Konia and Richards are reluctant to say that they would always advise firms to contact the police or other agencies, they both acknowledge it can be helpful. He has over 25 years experience in cyber security where he has advised some of largest companies in the world, assuring security on multi-million and multi-billion pound projects.
Nathan is the author of the popular "The Complete Cyber Security Course" which has been taken by over half a million students in countries. Over the years he has spoken at a number of security conferences, developed free security tools, and discovered serious security vulnerabilities in leading applications. I think GDPR looks like it will become the speed camera for data collectors using the internet highways, useful if applied with teeth….
Wish we had such laws in India which would make reporting of data breach mandatory. Also it would be good to make the custodians of data accountable for security breaches. Even I agree to your views, as I working for one of the client had a hit, but it got covered, its true that the organization tries to cover to avoid the damage in reputation.
Wow — shocked at just how much doesnt get reported. Great article — thanks Nathan! Great article. I wonder if this regulation apply only to corporations or also to smaller companies who also procces and store personal data. As a victum I have suffer alot as well as my family very hard for people to understand. The problem we see is that unless business executives are made aware of the reality of the situation, they will be less inclined to provide the data law enforcement needs.
While many of the cyber-crimes shown above may not be of the type that might affect your business, understand that a crime is a crime and the techniques that were used in these instances are often the same as those used against businesses. Reporting leads to data and data provides information that managed IT support companies and law enforcement can use in prevention. Your computer likely ties you to your bank accounts, and any number of other private documents.
Your work computer is just as data-rich for the cyber-criminal, maybe more so, which explains why the FBI is reporting a significant upward trend in tech support fraud, both in your home and in your workplace. As a managed IT support company, we take every precaution and work very diligently at keeping your IT network safe.
So do most other support companies. The simple fix is to not give anyone online access to your computer unless you know exactly who they are and, in the workplace, not unless you have received permission to do so from your supervisor.
If someone calls and claims to be from your IT support provider , they will be able to access your computer and install whatever patches, updates, new software, etc.
If they ask for your login credentials, be suspicious…very suspicious. How frequent is this version of cyber-crime? In some cases, people may simply not be aware that their information has been stolen and is being used. In other cases, perhaps the information did not yield a reward for the perpetrator, so you will never know and never report it. It may make more sense for these organizations to work with privacy security companies or insurers offering specific services to recover from these attacks.
Another reason is that the victim organization may not know that these incidents should be reported, or have an idea on how to reach out to the appropriate authority.
Over the years, law enforcement authorities in different countries have begun streamlining their processes to make it easier for organizations to file a report after an attack.
There are still some obstacles, as some local entities may not have systems capable of accepting these reports, Europol noted in its report.
0コメント