NORWICH – What do drive by downloads, spear phishing, work-at-home schemes and the Greek gods have in common? According to NBT Bank’s in-house security experts, they are but a few of the tactics used by cybercriminals to syphon money out of business and personal bank accounts.

“Cybercrime has reached epidemic proportions,” explained NBT President and CEO Martin Dietrich, during the introduction of a Cybercrime Prevention presentation hosted by NBT Bank in conjunction with Commerce Chenango.

More than one hundred local business leaders and IT professionals attended the breakfast session, held last Tuesday morning at Canasawacta Country Club.

According to NBT Chief Information Officer Joe Stagliano, cybercrime drains an estimated $117 billion from the U.S. economy each year. Only a fraction of that amount is ever reported.

“It’s earth shattering to see how much money is being lost in our economy today,” Stagliano said.

NBT invests a “tremendous amount” of human and financial resources to protect itself and its customers against this type of crime, the bank executive explained. But just as this and other financial institutions are protecting their resources, end-users must also take steps to protect themselves and their financial information.

“We can’t stop it on our own,” he said, explaining NBT’s commitment to educating consumers and businesses alike on the cyber threats out there and what they can do to detect, deter and defend themselves against these threats.

According to Senior Vice President and Bank Secrecy Officer Jim Terry, one of the biggest threats out there is a virus called ‘Zeus,’ which skates by 80 percent of commercially available anit-virus programs

“Like the king of all gods, this is the king of all viruses,” he told those in attendance, referring to the malicious program believed to be developed in the Ukraine. According to Terry, the former Soviet republic and other Eastern European nations are a hot-bed for cybercriminals.

“They are extremely organized, and they run their crime (organizations) like a business,” he said, recruiting marketing professionals, ex-bankers, programmers and hackers.

Once a PC is infected by Zeus, the malware recognizes when the user is attempting to access bank accounts and other sensitive financial information and notifies “the bad guys,” who will then record everything the user does.