Grande-Marlaska presents the Ministry of Home Affairs campaign against cybercrime

2023.2.8

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The Minister for Home Affairs, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has presented the department's strategic design for dealing with the increase in cybercrime in Spain, which includes the dissemination of a wide-ranging public awareness and sensitisation campaign.

"The double effect of the drop in conventional crime and the increase in cybercrime has led us to a turning point: today, one in five crimes in Spain is committed online," explained Grande-Marlaska, who defended the need to "alert and raise awareness among citizens because, according to experts, cybercrime and its consequences do not yet have the necessary social impact".

In a first phase, this campaign consists in the wide dissemination of an awareness-raising message in the form of a television spot and a graphic advertisement for both the written press and outdoor advertising media. It aims to draw the attention of citizens to the lack of protection and prevention that commonly characterises interaction in the digital world, and to the potential serious consequences this attitude can have.

In a second phase, the campaign will take to social networks, where experts from both the Ministry of Home Affairs and the National Police and Civil Guard will warn about the different cybercrimes that are detected or occur most frequently, and will explain the basic guidelines to protect ourselves from them. In this case, different segmented communication actions will target specific population groups, according to factors such as age and level of technological literacy.

"Our intention is to increase public confidence in the state law enforcement forces and agencies as the first public instrument in the fight against cybercrime, to generate a predisposition to report any illicit action suffered; and we ask citizens to help us protect them against cybercrime, because it will be very difficult to do so if they do not first become aware that they must protect themselves," added Grande-Marlaska.

At the presentation ceremony, the Minister was accompanied by the Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Pérez; the Director General for Coordination and Studies of the Secretary of State for Security, José Antonio Rodríguez; and the heads of the Judicial Police in the National Police and the Civil Guard, Chief Commissioner Rafael Pérez and General Ángel Alonso. Also in attendance were the Directors General of the National Police, Francisco Pardo, and the Civil Guard, María Gámez, the head of the Cybersecurity Coordination Office, Álvaro Lossada, and the heads of the specialised cybercrime units of both bodies.

The Cybersecurity Coordination Office strengthened

In addition to the awareness campaign, the Ministry of Home Affairs has adopted a series of important operational decisions aimed at substantially improving police capabilities and resources for the prevention and prosecution of cybercrime, and which constitute an advanced development of the Strategic Plan against Cybercrime approved by the department in 2021.

The Minister for Home Affairs pointed out as most relevant the attribution of greater executive capacities to the Cybersecurity Coordination Office (OCC), a body that links the Secretary of State for Security with the national cyber incident response centres of reference.

This office, whose staffing will be reinforced, will become the Cyber Incident Response Centre of the Ministry of Home Affairs in support of the Judicial Police (CSIRT-MIR-Judicial Police). Following this modification, it will provide technical support to the technological units of the state law enforcement forces and agencies, and will assume the functions assigned to the Secretary of State for Security as the competent authority for the security of networks and information systems for operators of essential and critical services.

This Cybersecurity Coordination Office will also be set up as a Cybercrime Observatory, with the mission of monitoring, detecting, processing and analysing criminal trends on the Internet, because this development of police intelligence is essential to meet new challenges and threats in the digital sphere.

In addition, and for the first time, the Secretary of State for Security will have a specific budget allocation of €5 million to cover the investments needed to provide the appropriate technological capabilities to both the Cybersecurity Coordination Office and the National Police and Civil Guard units specialised in the prevention and prosecution of cybercrime.

On this point, Grande-Marlaska recalled that the number of staff in the central and peripheral units specialised in cybersecurity of the National Police and Civil Guard has doubled in the last four years: while in 2018 these units had a total of 714 agents, by the end of 2022 this figure had grown to 1,352.

Statistics on the rise

In 2022, the state law enforcement forces and agencies recorded 375,506 criminal offences in whose planning, development and execution the use of technological tools, computer systems and digital transmission methods was a determining factor, and can therefore be included under the heading of cybercrime.

These are provisional data, pending consolidation, but they already show that the vast majority of these cybercrimes are fraud or computer fraud, a typology that includes 336,778 of the offences registered, almost 90% of the total.

Overall, cybercrime has seen an increase of 72% on the figure for 2019, rising to 352% on the 2015 figure, and to 442.9% in the case of computer fraud and scams.

Grande-Marlaska stressed that both the Ministry of Home Affairs and the state law enforcement forces and agencies pay special attention to "this criminal reality which, according to police experts, has a notable and negative impact on national interests, institutions, companies and citizens".

Non official translation