Europol: Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA)
Strategic, policy and tactical updates on the fight against cybercrime
Each year, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) publishes the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA), its flagship strategic report on key findings and emerging threats and developments in cybercrime — threats that impact governments, businesses and citizens in the EU.
The IOCTA provides key recommendations to law enforcement, policy makers and regulators to allow them to respond to cybercrime in an effective and concerted manner.
The report focuses on the crime areas that fall under EC3’s mandate. These cybercrime priorities, which are determined by the EU Policy Cycle – EMPACT, are currently:
The most recent IOCTA also looks at an additional crime area, online criminal markets, both on the surface web and Darknet. It also addresses the convergence of cyber and terrorism.
Another typical focus of the IOCTA are cross-cutting crime enablers, factors that straddle more than one crime area but are not necessarily inherently criminal themselves. These enablers include:
- phishing/smishing/vishing
- business email compromise
- bulletproof hosting
- anonymisation tools
- criminal abuse of cryptocurrencies
- money muling.