What is a Cyber Crime?
In the simplest terms, the (cyber law definition) of cyber crime is any crime that takes place over a network and/or a computer device. In business scenarios, the overwhelming majority of cyber crime is focused on achieving financial goals, such as stealing money, stealing personal information for use or resale, or even holding assets for ransom with the hopes of earning a big payout.
Financial motivators are not the exclusive cause of cyber crime focused on businesses, though. Hackers may target your business for a number of reasons, including non-financial theft or even espionage.
Most Common Cyber Crimes Your Business May Face
A number of different cyber crimes and security breaches are a constant threat to your business. While no cybersecurity front can ever guarantee complete protection from all cyber crime threats, it should take a proactive approach to defending your business against all common forms of (high tech crime). These common crimes include:
- Phishing scams. Phishing schemes use fraudulent messages and links to trick an individual into taking an action that will loan malware, ransomware or other malicious software onto a computer. For example, an employee may receive an email from a fake account asking them to click a link to reset their password. As soon as they click the link, the malware is then able to infiltrate your business network.
- (Cyber vandalism). While cyber vandalism may utilize phishing to infiltrate your network, the goal of this vandalism is to destroy files or other infrastructure that impacts your business performance. The motivation for this can be unclear, but in some cases it could be part of an effort to extort money from your business.
- DDoS attacks. This type of attack leverages a number of different sources to overwhelm a business website with traffic and force it offline. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a sophisticated process enabled by hackers, and could have a number of different motivations behind the crime.
- Identity theft. Cyber attacks focused on stealing personal information may be targeting not only your employees, but your customers as well. This could cause significant damage to your brand's reputation if those hackers succeed in stealing credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and other identifiable information.
The Benefits of (Cyber Crime Investigation)
Even with the best cyber security defense available, it's still possible for your business to fall victim to cyber crime in the future. When this happens, your business can seek to identify the liable party and recover some of your losses through an (online investigation) led by an experienced (cyber detective).
Cyber crime investigators are regularly used to investigate (high-tech crime) committed against businesses that face significant losses and/or liability as the result of that attack. The outcome of these investigations can be instrumental in helping you identify responsible parties, hold them liable for the damages, seek justice through legal actions against those parties, and even recover files and other digital assets that were stolen.
In many cases, cyber crime investigators hired by your company can conduct more effective investigations than local and national law enforcement because they have been hired specifically to help you in the aftermath of a (cyber intrusion) or attack. An investigator will help gather evidence to identify the responsible party, and even in cases where the attacker can't be identified or taken action against—for example, if they're in a part of the world where U.S. law enforcement has no influence—the findings of the investigation can still help your business understand the cause of the breach, and implement security changes that will prevent a similar breach from occurring in the future.
While you can't control whether cyber criminals target your business, you can control both the degree of difficulty in breaching your network, and the level of aggression with which you respond to these breaches and seek remediation. Consider enlisting the help of a cyber crime investigator to strengthen your threat response, your ability to seek damages, and your likelihood of recovering stolen assets as you attempt to bounce back from any cybersecurity breach.
