The National Crime Agency (NCA) has said that nearly half of the adults in the UK fail to install required security software on their PCs, tablets and mobile devices, putting themselves at the risk of cyber attacks.
NCA along with the government has started a campaign aiming to raise awareness among people about cyber attacks and how to protect themselves from these attacks.
The Office for National Statistics said that almost 10,731 users were victims to such attacks last year and it was observed that most of the attacks in the past could have been prevented if proper security software has been installed. Of these 37 percent of women and 29 percent of men are at risk of cyber attacks. In an ONS survey, 40 percent of those who took part admitted that they seldom installed security software on their devices.
The common methods used by hackers are passing around USB sticks containing infected files or malicious emails. Just as they gain access to personal computer files, criminals demand for ransom.
In addition to these explicit attacks, there were some vulnerabilities like Heartbleed unearthed this year and some massive attacks which exposed user information and passwords resulting in the compromise of user accounts of major social networks.
Included in such attacks is the European Central Bank which reported last month that hackers have eroded its defences and broke into that part of its website which stores the contact information of people who sign up for conferences.
While it is difficult to scale the cost of these attacks, the government says cyber crimes cost roughly £27 billion a year and with the dimension of these attacks changing, the cost would likely increase.
