Fight against Cybercrime : The importance of the fight
Cybercrime has been on the rise the last few years. Annually, an average of 1.5 million cyber-attacks are reported; 4000 every day and 170 every hour (“Cybercrime Statistics”, 2017). The days to come seem to be becoming gloomier. c are devising new techniques and coming up with new tools each passing day. In 2016, it was estimated that the global economy lost $450 billion to cyber-crime (“Cybercrime Statistics”, 2017).
That was an almost quadruple increment from the estimated $168 billion lost in 2015 (“Cybercrime Statistics”, 2017). It has been estimated that this figure will reach $2 trillion by 2019 (“Cybercrime Statistics”, 2017). This is barely a year and a half from today. Even with these shocking figures, individuals and businesses are failing to put up basic security mechanisms on their devices.
They are also acting recklessly on social media by giving away information that could lead to being hacked. It was said in 2014 that 47% of all American adults had some piece of private data about them stolen in data heists done by hackers in large companies (“Cybercrime Statistics”, 2017).
Justice against cyber criminals is hardly gotten in court. It has proven to be very difficult to catch and prosecute today’s cyber criminals (Grimes, 2017). They are advanced and know how to cover their trails. They have enough money to hire the best lawyers to defend them. Only one in 10,000 hackers gets caught and only one out of 100 successfully gets prosecuted in court (Grimes, 2017).
This calls for governments, organizations, and individuals to fight collaboratively against cyber-crime. The most important reason to fight cybercrime is to fight for future prosperity. Cybercrime is growing at a fast rate and it may bring down the global economy if it is given the chance to thrive. Once the estimated $2 trillion loss to cybercrime is reached in 2019, there will be a cross cutting effect to the economy that will be felt. Therefore become a fight for future prosperity.
Another importance of fighting against cybercrime is to gain the assurance of privacy in the future. Almost half of all adult US citizens have lost their privacy so far (“Cybercrime Statistics”, 2017). If the cyber criminals continue hacking big companies, not a single person will claim to have privacy. Lastly, the fight against cybercrime is important since it will assure the integrity and availability of systems in the future. There is no worse scenario that people doubting data contained in banks, stored by governments or health care centers.
Cybercrime has already threatened the integrity of such data with hackers compromising and modifying data stored by such institutions. There is an ongoing trend where most things such as paying bills, buying items and communication are being done mostly online. Cyber criminals are threatening the availability of such systems with denial of service attacks that are being supported by armies of botnets (Mazurczyk, Holt & Szczypiorski, 2016).
Importance of sharing the experience
It is important for individuals and organizations that have successfully fought cyber-crime to share their experience. This will enable other organizations and individuals to pick up the best cyber security practices. There is a lot that goes on in the preparation for cyber security incidences. It could certainly help if organizations had a good example to learn from. It is also important to share to support the collaborative efforts towards preventing future hacking attempts. If an organization that has been hacked releases this information in time, other organizations will act quickly to prevent the same type of an attack. Lastly, sharing the experience will psychologically demotivate future hacking attempts on the same organization.
References
Cybercrime Statistics. (2017). CBS. Retrieved 23 August 2017, from http://www.cbs.com/shows/csi-cyber/news/1003888/these-cybercrime-statistics-will-make-you-think-twice-about-your-password-where-s-the-csi-cyber-team-when-you-need-them-/
Grimes, R. (2017). Why it’s so hard to prosecute cyber criminals. CSO Online. Retrieved 23 August 2017, from http://www.csoonline.com/article/3147398/data-protection/why-its-so-hard-to-prosecute-cyber-criminals.html
Mazurczyk, W., Holt, T., & Szczypiorski, K. (2016). Guest Editors’ Introduction: Special Issue on Cyber Crime. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 13(2), 146-147.
