Growing Impact of Cybercrime

How deeply rooted is cybercrime?

Cybercrime has been rampant since the computer age started, from petty crimes such as performing weird functions on your computer to defacing, and now critical theft where even a country could even make an economy out of it.

The first massive cybercrime attacks were back in 1989 when $70 million was siphoned from the First National Bank of Chicago. Isn’t easy money it? Before massive cyber-attacks, there were petty cybercrimes that could be traced back as early as 1939 such as inventing the code-breaking machine and then breaking into someone’s the computer by cracking one’s password. Now that computer networks evolved and are continuously evolving; cybercrime also became more sophisticated and right now more threatening to also include industrial espionage.

Is it an increasing concern?

Definitely, an alarming issue, because cybercrime can cripple companies and economies. Let us take for example one of the latest well-known incident; the Bitcoin Exchange that filed for bankruptcy which is Mt. Gox. The exchange was hacked and lost $460 million from the digital heist, a business gone in a flash just because of security lapses.

Countries in Europe are also alarmed with the rising cybercrime incidents. The UK, for example, had almost half of their businesses experience cybercrime.

When we talk about security lapses, we are not only talking about the security of the devices, we also need to consider the users (victims) involved in such heists, most of the individuals are unaware and needs more education to counter socially engineered tactics, because most incidents that involve cyber heists points to users who were socially tricked into giving out information or filling out forms that are fraudulent.

Small businesses are the primary target of cybercriminals because most of them do not practice cybersecurity measures.

See the sample photo of a socially engineered message that will lead you to a phishing site:

Looks authentic? It does especially for those who are not keen on details, uninquisitive, and those who are new to any platforms would fall for it.

For the record how much does it cost in a Global scale? Roughly about $450 billion according to the CEO of Hiscox Insurance in an interview with a news site CNBC.

Countermeasures

The battle between cybercriminals and anti-cybercrime groups, firms, authorities, and companies have been long going on since. Through the combined effort of the law-abiding community, the growth of cybercrime is currently kept at bay through a combination of mitigation efforts.

Governments around the world pass laws that help authorities conduct legal operations against cybercriminals, private security firms countering and mitigating damages done by cybercriminals, etc.

As a small to medium business owner, you could start protecting yourself by protecting your computer with an anti-malware program, Cybercrime Solutions, educate more ourselves regarding cyber attacks, and monitor your network. If you have launched your online presence and makes the online transaction, it would be wise to protect your intellectual property rights by securing your trademark of your business and services, and then hire a firm that would monitor your intellectual property by conducting a brand abuse monitoring services 24/7.