2024-05-13 11:48:35
More than 800 companies and institutions reported attacks last year. Cybercriminals also caused significant damage in other ways.
According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the dangers posed by cyber attacks have continued to increase over the past year. This emerges from the latest “Federal Cybercrime Situation Report”, which was presented in Wiesbaden.
“The police database, but also the findings of individual IT security service providers, show a further increasing trend in cyber attacks in both quantitative and qualitative terms for 2023,” says the report.
The number of crimes committed abroad is increasing
This development is particularly responsible for cases that cause damage in Germany, but where the perpetrator’s whereabouts are abroad or are unknown. According to the federal situation report for 2023, the recorded cybercrime crimes committed abroad rose by around 28 percent compared to the previous year. Looking at the country, the police crime statistics recorded a slight decline in cyber crimes of minus 1.8 percent for the same period.
The most serious threats continue to be ransomware attacks, in which criminals encrypt company or public administration data and demand a ransom for decryption. Nationwide, more than 800 companies and institutions reported ransomware cases in 2023, according to the federal situation report.
Damage in the hundreds of billions
High amounts of damage were again caused by cybercrime in 2023, as the BKA explained and referred to figures from the digital association Bitkom. Accordingly, the total damage from analog and digital theft, industrial espionage or sabotage for companies in Germany amounted to 205.9 billion euros. According to information, Bitkom attributes almost three quarters of this total damage to cyber attacks. The explicitly stated damage caused by blackmail with stolen or encrypted data amounts to 16.1 billion euros.
Bitkom has called for better protection. “We actually have vulnerabilities everywhere,” said Bitkom Managing Director Bernhard Rohleder on ZDF’s “Morgenmagazin” on Monday. “It’s the infrastructures, it’s the companies, the institutions themselves and it’s their employees, because far too little is invested in training their own teams.” Rohleder spoke out in favor of “less federalism, more central responsibility” and greater investments to protect the IT infrastructure.