According to the Irish Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau, there has been a recent increase of cyber crime involving criminals utilising social media to hack user data. They are doing so by checking when a customer contacts their banks and then posing as the bank in order to obtain their data.

Detective Superintendent, Michael Gubbins stated the cyber criminals utilising social engineering to hack data is “at the very top”of potential threats. He also discussed how these threats are becoming harder to detect, due to the increase in what is known as “fileless” malware, which is not stored within the hard drive but in RAM, a temporary storage space, and therefore harder to track.

He also discussed how crypto-currency such as Bitcoin has enabled a new wave of cybercrime, as criminals target users in order to obtain their digital currency.

In the past year there have been an array of high-profile data breaches from some of the UK’s biggest organisations including: British Airways, Dixons Carphone, and Ticketmaster UK.

It is alarming that such large established organisations have jeopardised not only their company’s data, but also the personal data of their customers, through their lack of cyber security.

Many cybersecurity experts believe that a data breach can occur due to a simple mistake being made possibly when updating systems or when processing the migration of data. Although there has been a substantial amount of investment placed on cybersecurity, there are still gaps in the basic procedures, which must be addressed.