Unless you’d like to get caught and go to prison, you really don’t want to mess with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The bane of criminals everywhere, the FBI is the one group that stays on top of all types of crime, regardless of the circumstances or means. In recent years, the FBI has begun placing more emphasis on controlling cyber crime, which has become a force to be reckoned with all over the world. This emphasis may need to be upgraded over the next few years, even though cyber crime is only the bureau’s third priority.

A story in WBNS 10 TV discusses how the FBI is readying itself for cyber crime to take over the number one spot on the FBI’s list of priorities, primarily because of the increasing importance that the world is placing on technology:

“FBI Supervisory Special Agent Robert White said that criminals always find new ways to exploit victims and businesses, which keeps the U.S. at risk. ’Given our connection to the Internet, and our infrastructure and everything being computerized, it also lends itself to possible cyber terrorism,’ White said. The average Web user is the most vulnerable…”

The data regarding cyber crime over the last year is staggering and can be very difficult to amend after the damage is done:

“According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, there were more than 7,300 complaints reported in Ohio in 2010.  The median dollar loss for all complaints was $600.  The top complaint totaled more than $242,000.”

By taking simple hacker tricks like phishing (which we have discussed at length in this blog) and injecting malicious code into seemingly normal looking emails, you may actually give up your computer’s stored credit card or ID information up in seconds. For the normal person, one way to stay safe – according to the article – is to shut off your PC when it isn’t in use. For businesses, extra steps must be taken to secure your data.

If these cyber crimes are of concern to you and your company, consider getting an internal penetration test completed to see how secure your data system is.