Many thanks to our colleagues Evangelos Markatos (FORTH), Mary Aiken and Julia Davidson (University of East London), Alexey Kirichenko (WithSecure), and David Wright (Trilateral Research) for their article on our project published in ERCIM News' special issue on Fighting Cybercrime!
Over the past few years, we have seen cybercrime rising to become a trillion-dollar business world-wide. Although the cost of cybercrime was close to $5.5 trillion in 2020, it is now estimated to double by 2025. To put this number in perspective, a cost of $10.5 trillion a year is $28 billion per day, or $20 million a minute, or close to $330,000 a second. At such staggering rates, it is imperative to understand the drivers of cybercrime and how they can be mitigated.
Our study on the technical drivers of cybercrime, within the EU-funded CC-DRIVER project, suggests that our digital society and attendant technical developments offer immense opportunities for cybercriminals. [...] All of these technical drivers and the novel “as-a-service” business model make it evident that cybercrime is a highly adaptable, agile and growing business with new threat actors and criminal groups continuously entering the field. Understanding the models and the drivers is of the utmost importance for successfully countering cybercrime.
Effects of cybercrime experienced by victims (source: F-Secure)
Read the full text here.