The chief of Iran’s cyber police visited electronic payment company Asan Pardakht on Monday, reiterating his commitment to securing banking transactions in cyberspace.
“Electronic payment services are gaining favor with the public and that is why increasing security in this sector is paramount,” Kamal Hadian said.
Asan Pardakht, established in 2009, is a company specializing in secure electronic payments. It offers point of sales, mobile payment services known as Unstructured Supplementary Service Data and more.
“The culture of using secure electronic payments must be developed. This is one of the things electronic payment companies should focus on,” said the police chief, IRNA reported.
Cybercrime is a fast-growing area of crime. More and more criminals are exploiting the speed, convenience and anonymity of the Internet to commit a diverse range of criminal activities that know no borders, either physical or virtual.
The Iranian Cyber Police, known as FATA, is a unit of the Islamic Republic of Iran Police founded in January 2011. It deals with all cyber crimes. These crimes include attacks on computer hardware and software, for example, botnets, malware and network intrusion, and also financial crimes and corruption such as online fraud, penetration of online financial services and phishing.
FATA also deals with social media and their misuse in political and social arenas.
In January 2012, the cyber police issued new guidelines for Internet cafés, urging users to provide personal information that would be kept by café owners for six months, as well as a record of the websites they visited. The rules also require café owners to install closed-circuit television cameras and maintain the recordings for six months. The cyber police stated the measures are being implemented because “citizens are concerned about theft of information.”
“People have to feel secure when using electronic payments. They must know their money is safe. This is not possible without investment by e-payment companies,” said Hadian.
In the past, cybercrime was committed mainly by individuals or small groups. Today, we are seeing criminal organizations working with criminally minded technology professionals to commit cybercrime, often to fund other illegal activities. Highly complex, these cybercriminal networks bring together individuals from across the globe in real time to commit crimes on an unprecedented scale.
Criminal organizations are turning increasingly to the Internet to facilitate their activities and maximize their profit in the shortest time. The crimes themselves are not necessarily new—such as theft, fraud, illegal gambling and sale of fake medicines—but they are evolving in line with the opportunities presented online and therefore becoming more widespread and damaging.
