Madrid (EFE).- «You would never leave your house open and unprotected. Don’t do it online.” With this message, the Ministry of the Interior appeals to citizens to protect themselves and raise awareness about cybercrime. Only last year, 375,506 cybercrimes were registered, which means that one in five offenses is already committed online.
A rise in crimes committed in the virtual environment that has “accelerated notably” as a result of the pandemic, since they have increased by 72 percent compared to 2019, a statistical reference exercise in crime, and up to 352 percent if we look at the cybercrimes committed in 2015.
90% of cybercrimes are online scams and fraud
Nine out of ten of these crimes are scams and fraud “online” and represent 442 percent more than what was perpetrated seven years ago, while “conventional” crime is in decline.
This still undetailed and unfinished x-ray of the phenomenon of cybercrime has served the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to defend the need to “alert and sensitize the public”, since the consequences of this crime “do not generate still the necessary social impact”.
For this reason, from this Thursday Interior launches a campaign in the media to raise awareness about the lack of protection that technological users have in their virtual life but that they would not have in real life.
Thus, some of these advertisements reflect exaggerated situations in which a woman leaves the door of her house open, an old man some bills on a table or a young man some photos he has taken naked. The objective is to appeal to the common sense of the citizen so that these irresponsible behaviors are not transferred to the virtual world.
In a second phase, the campaign will jump to social networks, where experts from both the Ministry of the Interior and the National Police and the Civil Guard will warn about the different cybercrimes that are detected or occur more frequently and will explain the basic guidelines for protect us from them.
Interior asks victims to report
In this sense, Marlaska has encouraged citizens who are victims of any cybercrime to report it. “We ask citizens to help us protect them, because it will be very difficult to do so if they do not first become aware that they must protect themselves against cybercrime,” added the minister.
Along with the awareness campaign, the Interior will reinforce the capacities of the Cybersecurity Coordination Office (OCC), the body that links the Secretary of State for Security with the reference centers for response to national cybernetic incidents.
This office, whose staff will increase, will become the Cyber Incident Response Center of the Ministry of the Interior to support the Judicial Police (CSIRT-MIR-Judicial Police).
After this modification, it will provide technical support to the technological units of the State Security Forces and Corps and will become the Cybercrime Observatory, with the mission of monitoring, detecting, processing and analyzing criminal trends on the Internet.
In the minister’s opinion, police intelligence is “essential to face the new challenges and threats in the digital sphere.”
In addition, and for the first time, the Secretary of State for Security will have a specific budget of five million euros to cover the necessary investments to provide the Office with the appropriate technological capabilities, as well as the National Police and Civil Guard units. specialized.
Marlaska recalled the increase in these templates: If in 2018 these units had a total of 714 agents, at the end of 2022 this figure grew to 1,352 troops.
Finally, the minister has advanced that the next crime statistics that his department publishes every quarter will include a breakdown of cybercrime.