Page 29 - index

The role of cyber technologies within an organized crime

By Milica Djekic

Cyber technologies are gaining popularity nowadays. Unfortunately, they are not necessarily in
the service of good, but rather in the hands of criminals and terrorists. A very frequent scenario
of today is that organized crime groups use cyber technologies in order to deal with drug
trafficking, money laundering, online gambling and so on. In this brief review, we would attempt
to explain how organized crime groups appear by their hierarchy, how they rely on IT services
and why a cyber tracking takes advantage over the physical one.

The operational level of responsibility

Today’s organized crime market is getting highly competitive and very well-organized. In the
practice, only the armatures would try to commit a crime without careful planning and
preparations. Professionals would never do that. They carefully plan every their step and do
things with the lowest possible amount of improvisation.

The crime itself is a consequence of a long-term preparation and careful gathering of
information about their targets or goals. Once everything is prepared, the bad guys would make
a move. Also, they would carefully assure the information to their organization about their target
using different ways of tracking – either in physical or cyber sense.

As an example of cyber tracking at operational level of responsibility within an organized crime
environment, we would mention cyber operators which purpose is to gather information through
cyber means about the target and to transfer them to higher level of hierarchy.

The role of cyber operators is to track someone’s e-mail account, SMS messages or even
phone calls in order to provide a report about such a person’s activities to the higher level of
responsibility within their organized crime group.

In a reality, it’s necessary to discover each of these cells, because they are something on which
an organized crime hierarchy relies. They use highly skilled individuals to provide such a sort of
service.

Although their activity leaves evidence in the cyberspace, it is recommended to security
services to periodically investigate if there was any sort of cyber breaches regarding persons
that may be exposed to the risk.

The tactical level of responsibility

This level of responsibility within an organized crime group is supposed to manage cells at an
operational level and serve as a link between an operational and strategic level.

29 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – March 2015 Edition
Copyright © Cyber Defense Magazine, All rights reserved worldwide