4 of 8,032 New research reveals Britain’s wealthiest counties targeted by cybercriminals

A new report from cybersecurity leaders, ESET, reveals Londoners are at the greatest risk of cyberattacks in the UK with 5,258 reports from the region in the past year.

The study looked at cybercrime data from the City of London Police’s Fraud and Cyber Crime Dashboard to reveal the most common types of cybercrime in the UK and the areas with the highest rates of cybercrime.

The UK areas with the highest rates of cybercrime:

Rank	Police Force	Total cybercrime reports last year	Population	Cybercrimes per 100,000 people	Percentage change (YoY)
1	Metropolitan (London)	5,258	8,991,600	58.5	-11.8%
2	Surrey	644	1,199,900	53.7	-8.1%
3	Kent	999	1,868,200	53.5	-9.0%
4	Northamptonshire	399	757,200	52.7	-0.2%
5	Hertfordshire	607	1,195,700	50.8	-19.4%
6	Cheshire	541	1,069,600	50.6	-10.8%
7	Nottinghamshire	581	1,170,500	49.6	-0.3%
8	Cambridgeshire	412	859,800	47.9	-5.5%
9	Thames Valley	1,142	2,431,900	47.0	-14.8%
10	Sussex	803	1,718,200	46.7	-5.8%

London tops the list in terms of most cybercrimes per 100,000 people, at 58.5, as well as the highest overall number of cybercrimes in the UK. Surrey takes second place, rising three places from 2020, while Kent comes in third.

The research also reveals:

The UK has seen a slight decline in cybercrime of -2.97%, with 9 in 10 regions seeing a decrease of cybercrime between 2020 and 2021. Gloucestershire had the biggest reduction in cybercrime, dropping by over a hundred from 2020 to 2021 meaning a decrease of 31.56%.
The area with the highest increase in recorded cybercrime is Norfolk, rising by 19.83% between 2020 and 2021 from 343 to 411.
The most common type of cybercrime in the UK was found to be hacking, which made up 85% of the total reported cybercrimes.

To view the full research please click here.

Jake Moore, Cybersecurity Specialist for ESET, commented on the findings:

“Knowledge is the key to reducing cybercrime and with this noticeable shift in offences reported year on year, it is starting to suggest that people are becoming more savvy at spotting scams and keeping their wits about them. Social media and email hacking, however, remains the biggest threat across the country so people need to remember to implement basic security measures to combat hacking with password managers and turning on multi-factor authentication for all online accounts.”