UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has launched a cross-governmental security awareness campaign alongside a world-leading scam reporting service to help people protect themselves from malicious cyber criminals exploiting the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.
The programme has been developed with support from the Cabinet Office, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and the Home Office. “Technology is helping us cope with the coronavirus crisis and will play a role helping us out of it – but that means cyber security is more important than ever,” said NCSC CEO Ciaran Martin.
“With greater use of technology, there are different ways attackers can harm all of us. But everyone can help to stop them by following the guidance campaign we have launched today. But even with the best security in place, some attacks will still get through.
“That’s why we have created a new national reporting service for suspicious emails – and if they link to malicious content, it will be taken down or blocked. By forwarding messages to us, you will be protecting the UK from email scams and cyber crime,” he said.
The Cyber Aware campaign will offer actionable advice and guidance to help people protect their devices, accounts and passwords from cyber criminals, while the new Suspicious Email Reporting Service is supposed to make it easier for people to forward suspicious emails to the NCSC – these do not have to be coronavirus-related, although it is likely most will be for the time being.
Developed alongside the City of London Police, the service allows people to forward suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk, where an automated programme will test the validity of the contents, helping the NCSC and its partners remove scams and phishing websites quicker. It will also act as a data-gathering exercise to help law enforcement analyse real-time reports and identify new patterns in online offending.
“As we all stay indoors and spend more time online, there is more opportunity for criminals to try to trick people into parting with their money,” said commander Karen Baxter of the City of London Police, the national lead force for fraud in the UK.
The NCSC said it has already removed 472 fake online shops selling fraudulent coronavirus-related items, 555 malware distribution sites and 200 phishing sites trying to harvest personally identifiable information (PII), and tackled 823 advance-fee frauds.
So far, more than £2m has been lost to coronavirus-related fraud in the UK, according to Action Fraud, and the true figure is likely to be much higher as not every victim comes forward. Increasingly, a number of coronavirus-related email fraud attempts relate to tax refunds from HMRC, and council tax reductions for people on low incomes or benefits, said Action Fraud, which has received well over 100 reports of such scams in the past fortnight.
