A number of Calgary companies have fallen victim to cyber attacks over the last year and police held an information session on Thursday for local business owners to learn more about how to keep their systems safe.

The Cyber Business Academy is in its second year and this year the focus was on large businesses to help them create strategies to protect their digital data.

“They may not be educated in the area of cybersecurity. Help them make sure they have the proper cyber infrastructure in place and help them make sure they have the proper response plan, should or when that event does occur to them, that brings their business under some sort of cyber attack or leaves them in a cyber crisis,” said Staff Sgt. Cory Dayley of the Cyber/Forensics Unit.

Police say cyber attackers target businesses by sending phishing emails to employees that include ransomware, which can encrypt a company’s data and deny them access until a ransom is paid.

Frausters are also sending emails that look legitimate to specific people in accounting and financial positions who are then asked to transfer funds or pay fake invoices.

“We’ve seen a lot of calls here in Calgary in the last year. We’ve seen an increase in attacks on businesses through business email, compromised or phishing emails, or maybe a network that’s just not secured where a traditional hacker can come in through the internet and attack their network unknown to them so we just feel it’s really important to continue the conversation that we’re having business by business on a more global scale,” said Dayley.

Representatives from over 40 businesses attended the session to hear from experts who worked with them to identify potential risks.

“We’d really like to jump in front of the cyber situation and if we can put policies and rules and such in place that would be your best offence before cyber situations arise,” said Paul McGhee from Convergent Technologies. “Some of these very early steps that customers can take of knowing how to log on and, they are basics we are all used to them, but you can eliminate 50 to 70 percent of an incidence consideration by doing some of these basic steps.”

“The feedback has been excellent. The appetite for this type of content is huge so really it’s not always for the police to be in the position of telling people what to do, we’re a partner in the process and we really want to bring in the companies that are experts in this field to help businesses through this process.,” said Dayley. “The impact is massive.”

Over 1700 cyber-type crimes were reported to police in 2017 and investigators say almost half were related to fraud and identity theft.