Introduction
Cybercrime has become a major problem. People are involved in many criminal activities. One of the cybercrimes is email account compromise (EAC). EAC is a criminal organization that preys on businesses and people intending to steal money from their bank accounts. According to IC3, there were 585 additional cases in 2021, totaling a loss of $2.4 billion (FBI,2021). IC3 received a complaint from a victim who had lost over $1.5 million to fraudsters in December of 2021. In June of 2021, another case was recorded to IC3 case whereby a victim lost $ 198k to fraud. In the year 2019, 23,775 EAC cases were reported. In 2020, there were 19369 cases, while in 2021, 19954 cases were reported (FBI,2021). The data showed upward and downward trends (FBI,2021). A downward trend was observed from 2019 to 2020 since there was a falling data set, while up work trend was seen from 2020 to 2021 since there were rising data points (Gudmundson et al.,2019). Thus, the rise of Email Account Compromise is on the rise and people are losing information and money to criminals.
Discussion
Data were collected utilizing crime reporting. The complaints are the source of data, and an IC3 analyst records and examine it. The complainant submits a case outlining how they were defrauded. The information was gathered through the reporting of crimes, and each sort of crime is listed in the complaint. The analyst also keeps track of people who register complaints more than once, leading to numerous duplicates. The information from the complaint is then used to create reports. The reason why data is collected is to help law enforcement units to understand the extent to which victims are impacted by crime and the efficacy of the reaction made in response to such incidents. Reporting and documenting such occurrences aids governments and law enforcement locate crime hotspots and predict future incidents in certain regions. Utilizing data to pinpoint these centers of criminal activity enables authorities to allocate the proper resources for enforcing laws (FBI,2021). Additionally, the inquiry is completed quickly, and criminal activity is predicted through data collecting.
The crime that victimizes innocent individuals is related to various risk factors. Businesses make up the majority of EAC criminal cases. As a consequence, businesses have suffered huge financial losses as a result of cybercriminals’ attacks. Additionally, BEC has access to valuable assets and private information they sell on the underground market. Since the information necessary to provide insights into the development of the business has been tainted, losing business information could lead to its closure. Compromise of business data endangers the loss of significant information about the business which destroys the reputation of the business as a result of the failure of the business to protect client data (Okpa et al., 2022). As a result, the company struggles to compete since much of its resources are going toward protecting organizational data.
Cybercriminals exploit their expertise in email compromise to cause a variety of problems for businesses. For instance, dangers like setting up phony invoice schemes result from email account compromises. The attacker sends hacked emails that mimic the sender and demand money transfers for paying invoices to specific accounts. The attackers may pose as highly placed company employees and request an immediate transfer of funds. Additionally, hackers target the HR manager who provides personal information and organizational data that they can use to launch additional attacks on the company. Levitin et al. (2020) estimate that 60% of US financial institutions suffered financial losses due to cybercrime. According to Levin et al. (2020), BAC crime cost cybercriminals over $2.5 billion; hence these crimes must be reduced. According to Levin et al. (2020), this can be achieved by making operational changes, using multiple email authentication, and improving the security aspects of organizational equipment. Implementation of strategies requires the conclusion that is drawn from data. For example; in December 2021, in the state of Philadelphia, IC3 received complaints from victims of EAC crime whereby the victim lost $1.5 million to fraud (FBI,2021). To mitigate the crime, IC3 moved swiftly to notify the victim’s financial institution about the fraud that initiated the blockchain that killed the transfer, thus, making the funds recovery possible (FBI,2021). Therefore, the mitigation of crimes reduces the exposure of people and businesses to financial loss.
The National Institute of Justice employs the use of the IC3 programs that enable most organizations to protect their assets through establishing programs that tighten the security features of financial institutions, hence, mitigating risks involving the victimization of financial transactions. The programs identify the cybercrime incident and report the case immediately to the responsible financial authorities. The IC3 programs ensure victimization has been minimized by ensuring that it reduces the damage caused by cyber criminals through providing free cyber hygiene services such as vulnerability scanning. Moreover, it ensures that the organization’s network is protected by the use of antivirus and that its programs are regularly updated. Additionally, the IC3 programs empower bank and bank users by allowing them to take part in decision-making programs, thus, ensuring that people within the workplace are well-informed about security investments. By prioritizing security investments, the senior management can take exigent measures that protect critical assets of the organization in case of intrusion (INSIGHT, 2021). Therefore, an adaptation of IC3 programs can help organizations mitigate risks involving the victimization of cybercrimes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, cybercrimes are becoming more prevalent and harming people and businesses more than ever. Email Account Compromise is one of the cybercrimes. Cybercriminals use this standard to pose as highly placed employees of the company and extort money from them into their bank accounts. Additionally, cybercriminals rob companies of their data and sell it on the black market. The national institute of Justice, which is actively involved in ensuring that phishing and cybercrime are kept to a minimum, has helped reduce these threats.
References
Federal Bureau of Investigations. 2021 Internet Crime Complaint Center Annual Report. Web.
Gudmundsson, L., Leonard, M., Do, H. X., Westra, S., & Seneviratne, S. I. (2019). Observed trends in global indicators of mean and extreme streamflow. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(2), 756-766.
Levitin, G., Xing, L., & Xiang, Y. (2020). Co-residence data theft attacks on N-Version programming-based cloud services with task cancelation. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 52(1), 324-333.
INSIGHT, C. (2021). Cybersecurity: Recent Policy and Guidance on Federal Vulnerability Disclosure Programs. system, 5, 30. Web.
Okpa, J. T., Ajah, B. O., Nzeakor, O. F., Eshiotse, E., & Abang, T. A. (2022). Business e-mail compromise scam, cyber victimization, and economic sustainability of corporate organizations in Nigeria. Security Journal, 1-23.. Web.