The crime scene is becoming increasingly bloodless, Bengaluru police chief B Dayananda says, noting the exponential rise in cybercrimes that mainly target youths and senior citizens.
"We are moving from bloodshed crimes to bloodless crimes," he said on the second day of the 26th Annual Karnataka Conference, organised by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association in the city.
This year’s conference theme was 'A Hermit out of its Shell: Digitisation, privacy, cyber security and current threats'.
Dayananda said cybercrimes offer an easy way to make money because of anonymity and tough detection. He said the saying "nothing is a crime unless there is blood" had become passé and asked citizens to be extra cautious.
Citing statistics, the top cop said that while Karnataka was third nationwide in cybercrimes, the state had taken proactive measures to limit these cases. He noted that Karnataka was the first state to set up a cyber lab and opened a cybercrime police station in the early 2000s.
Stating that 1,500 cybercrimes are reported in India every day on average, Dayananda said the actual number was far higher because many cases go unreported. "People won’t report them because of shame. We urge them not to take a step back from registering a complaint as no judgements will be made,” he said.
Speaking on the first day of the conference, Karnataka CID chief Dr M A Saleem highlighted the gaps in the cyber security base.
He said that while cutting-edge technology was used to fight cybercrimes, a shortage of human resources limited the gains. "The key essential part in solving these cases is identifying the source and malware used to commit such crimes. For that, we need data forensic experts,” Saleem said.
Cyber security experts spoke about the future of cyber security, navigating Artificial Intelligence, cyber warfare and the digital battlefield during other sessions at the conference.