Cybercrime
Cybercrime is a broad term that refers to any crime committed using the internet, and the volume and impact of these crimes continues to rise.
While there are many small-time crooks in the cybercrime world, over the last ten years there has emerged a highly professional class of organized criminals that drive the vast majority of major exploits. Criminal, terrorist and nation-state cyber attacks against banks, technology companies, online merchants, individuals and government agencies cost the U.S. economy $400 billion annually, according to an updated Congressional report from 2008.
According to McAfee Research, there was more malware in 2008 than ever before. In the 15 preceding years, the total number of malware identified was about 358,000 pieces, in 2008 this jumped to almost 1.5 million pieces, an average of 3,500 pieces of malware each day. These malicious programs are written with only one purpose in mind, to make money.
These threats are projected to continue to increase rapidly and to react and shift quickly to exploit the latest headline news – whether that’s creating scams around bank mergers, economic stimulus phishing, or new mortgage rate reductions – to lure consumers into their exploits.
The sheer volume of attacks is staggering. Even more staggering is to discover how far behind we are in addressing them.
We need to increase education efforts to reduce the number of people falling victim to these crimes. We need to increase the sense of urgency in businesses and services in combating these crimes, and we need to expand the resources provided to law enforcement to go after these very complex cases.
Every internet user plays a role in either minimizing or magnifying the reach of Internet crime. We each carry the responsibility not only to ourselves and our families, but to the larger Internet community to be informed and proactively defend against exploitation.
Every unprotected Internet connected device becomes a vector for criminal use. Unsecured and compromised computers impact every consumer and business as they become key routes through which criminals launch their attacks.
Every individual who fails to learn how to identify phishing and other online fraudulent exploits feeds these organizations coffers and finances their ability to continue and expand their reach.
We are all foot soldiers in the battle for control of the Internet – at stake is whether the Internet continues to be the fantastic opportunity we can trust and use, or a dangerous war zone where the risks eventually outweigh potential benefits.