Businesses, organisations and institutions have failed to invest sufficiently in cybersecurity. With the advent of 5G, the widespread use of social media in all areas of life and the exponential expansion of cyberspace, this is an issue that will only get worse with each passing year.
The data is crystal clear. According to the latest Q3 2022 Crime Report published by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, the number of cyberattacks in Spain during the first nine months of 2022 was almost 90% higher than in the same period of 2019, the year before the pandemic began. Police forces reported a total of 114,946 cybercrime cases during the first nine months of 2019, rising to 217,571 between January and September 2022.
If we break these figures down by type of crime, we can see that scamming shot up by an alarming 96%, from 97,234 cases in 2019 to 191,160 in 2022. The data provided by the security forces is even more shocking if we look further back than 2019. There were a total of 254,934 cases in the last 12 months (September 2021 to 2022), up from 140,354 for the whole of 2019 and 45,894 in 2016. In other words, in just the past six years, the number of computer scams has surged by 455.5%.
According to its 2022 data, the Aiuken Cybersecurity Observatory has revealed that cybercrime is also rampant on social media. Ransomware attacks (where data is seized) via social media virtually doubled from 8.5% in 2021 to 15.3% in 2022, as more and more people are using social media.
One in three ransomware attacks targeted their victims via the various email platforms (19.1%), payment cards (6.3%) and e-commerce (5.6%). It is patently clear that in a network society, no one is safe from cybercrime.
Aiuken is a Spanish multinational that protects large companies, telecommunications networks and critical infrastructure. This mountain of evidence has prompted them to sound the alarm about the risk to businesses, institutions and individuals, while stepping up their efforts to combat this scourge.
According to Juan Miguel Velasco, CEO of Aiuken Cybersecurity, “2023 looks set to be a turning point for cybersecurity, as there is a growing awareness of the need to protect our IT systems.” Velasco is therefore urging Spain to “take advantage of EU Next Generation funding to ensure sufficient investment and commitment to fight cyberattacks across Europe.”
