Online Scams Break Record In 2021

Businesses have been advised that having cyber security is more important now than ever before, as a record number of scams were detected last year.

GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) revealed it removed more than 2.7 million breaches from the internet in 2021, including fake celebrity endorsements and counterfeit vaccine passports.

Thanks to its Active Cyber Defence programme, more than four times the number of online scams detected in 2020 were found last year.

Dr Ian Levy, technical director of NCSC, said: “Over the past five years, our Active Cyber Defence programme has been central to preventing millions of cyber-attacks from causing harm to the UK.”

This includes removing over 1,400 NHS-themed phishing campaigns, blocking more than 1.2 million domains linked with Android malware Flubot, and flagging an excess of 33 million events to organisations that were signed up to NCSC’s Early Warning Service.

By the end of last year, more than 4,600 people had committed to the programme, which indicates if there is something malicious on their systems.

Chief executive officer for NCSC Lindy Cameron has even had her name used in an email scam to tempt a recipient to share their personal details.

She stated: “We know that scammers will go to great lengths, and indeed my name has been used to try and trick people.”

This comes after the GCHQ’s Suspicious Email Reporting Service revealed it has received more than 10.5 million suspect emails since it launched in April 2020. This has led to the takedown of 76,000 online scams.

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