Cybercrime

Advances in technology and cyber related crime, impacts across virtually all areas of policing. It is an enabler of crime, such as fraud, harassment, child sexual abuse and exploitation or pure cyber-dependent crime and is also a source of significant amounts of data, in both an online and offline context.

Cyber criminals seek to exploit human or security vulnerabilities in order to steal passwords, data or money directly. The most common cyber threats include:

  • Hacking – including of social media and email passwords
  • Phishing – bogus emails asking for security information and personal details
  • Malicious software – including ransomware through which criminals hijack files and hold them to ransom
  • Distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against websites – often accompanied by extortion

Factsheet: Cyber Crime Fact Sheet (PDF; 144Kb)

Key messages

  • 14 reports were recorded by Action Fraud/Durham police by organisations reporting cyber dependant crime, specifically cyber security breaches or cyber-attacks in this 12-month period. These 14 reports relate to 12 organisations (some organisations have made multiple reports).
  • As a proportion, a total of 21 cyber-dependant reports were made by organisations in this 12-month period, so the 14 that relate to cyber security breaches or attacks represents 66.7%. No figures are provided for any financial losses.
  • All 14 reports (100%) are recorded as NFIB (National Fraud Intelligence Bureau) Frauds under the following subcategories:
  • Hacking – social media and email.
  • Hacking – personal, Computer virus/malware/spyware.
  • Hacking – extortion and Hacking – PBX * (Private branch exchanges) dial through.

 Links to data

The documents we publish on this page are either legally required to be made available for inspection, for information and analysis purposes or may have been supplied by the public and so in some cases may not be fully accessible. If, for any reason, you cannot access the documents and need an alternative format, please email ina@durham.gov.uk.