Finnish Cops Solve Only 4% Of Internet Crimes

Official records, including those compiled by Statistics Finland, show that police solved 59 of 1,500 reported data breaches—that's four percent of cases—last year, the Finnish national broadcaster Yle News disclosed.

Photo Insert: With the incidence of cybercrimes in Finland growing, police are struggling to attract enough specialized experts to make a dent in caseloads.

A decade ago, police managed to solve more than 30 percent of data breach cases. Police told Yle that the shrinking percentage of solved cases reflects the explosion in online crime. In 2012, for example, police said they dealt with fewer than 500 cybercrime cases.

With the incidence of cybercrimes in Finland growing, police are struggling to attract enough specialized experts to make a dent in caseloads. "We need a lot of civilian knowhow: Engineers, big data experts, and everything in between," he said.

"Finding these people in a country the size of Finland is hard work. Competition is tough and working for the state may not be their number one choice."

By June of this year, police had recorded more than 1,000 suspected data breaches. A few dozen cases a year are considered serious—or aggravated—offenses. Last year, police solved one aggravated case out of a total of eight.

Hackers targeting large organizations have made headlines lately, including attacks on Finnish news agency STT, Parliament, and psychotherapy center Vastaamo. Most attacks, however, target regular people.

"There's a lot of hacking of social media accounts where hackers try to blackmail account holders," Mikko Rauhamaa, who heads the National Bureau of Investigation's (NBI) cybercrime center, explained. Rauhamaa said criminals are most often seeking financial gain by stealing information and selling it to other parties.

Denial-of-service attacks (DoS), which make systems inaccessible to users, have also shot up in recent years, according to Rauhamaa. He pointed out that those ordering DoS attacks and the groups carrying them out are often different entities, further complicating investigations.

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