Police say Hong Kong saw a significant increase in online crimes and hacking attacks last year, urging businesses to improve training so their employees better understand cybersecurity threats.

Speaking at a media briefing, officers said they recorded 37 cyberattack cases last year, up more than 50 percent from 2022. Victims reported losses of more than HK$2 million.

"The number of cyberattacks around the world recorded an increased trend, so it is not a unique problem in Hong Kong," said Baron Chan, acting senior superintendent of the Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau.

"But we also observed that because of the online activities becoming more active, so consequently, the chance of being attacked online is also increasing,"

A number of major institutions, such as Cyberport, the Consumer Council and the South China Athletic Association have fallen victim to cyberattacks since last year.

Chan highlighted the importance of educating employees about cybersecurity risks and backing up data from time to time.

"One of the most important (things) is how they can educate their employees to detect and prevent cybersecurity risk. So we always stress on how they can educate and provide training to their employees, including phishing email risk, phishing email threat, malware attack, social engineering attack," he said.

"Second of all is that they have to do some backup of their critical computer systems. The backup must be offline and also must not be a single backup."

Asked whether there will be tighter scrutiny on internet crimes after the passage of national security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law, Chan said the force would continue to monitor national security threats online.

"The police force has effective intelligence gathering in the cyber world so that we can provide timely intelligence, especially to some critical infrastructures in order to protect them from cyber attack so that the national security can be protected in a timely and efficient manner," he said.

"I think the passing of the law didn't really affect the job that we are doing, but it empower us with more legislation to tackle cyber problems."