ADRIAN NARAYAN WRITES – Online crime is on the rise in India and the nation’s cyber cops say beware digital extortion.
As this continues to become a major issue, India has ranked as the world’s sixth most targeted country (second in Asia), in terms of financial institutions that are hacked. Internet hackers have and continue to penetrate feeble security systems of various businesses, in order to encrypt a company’s information. Once this is done, fraudsters are able to cut business owners’ access to their own personal information or worse yet, their entire company’s data. This leaves the victims no choice but to pay up to the hackers demand for money in order to have decrypt the highly confidential data.
From large scale cases of confronting cyber-terrorism to smaller cases of combatting cyber bullying, internet-related crimes are increasingly becoming a major component in the criminal justice system within certain neighborhoods in India. This includes the state of Hyderabad, which has encountered numerous reports from citizens who have become victims to cyber attacks, most of which are rooted in mere bank frauds or credit/debit frauds. Unlike cyber extortion, such frauds are less risky as banks are becoming more secure and restricting access to bank accounts without the permission of the personal account holders.
Unfortunately, secure bank systems can’t comply with lacking security systems that allow hackers to sell personal data such as email IDs to banking routing numbers and other personal information of their targets. Fortunately, as CEOs and small business owners learn the necessity for higher-end security systems, one could only hope that cyber extortion criminal reports dwindle down.