- Aug 6, 2015
- 306
Cybercriminals are as varied as other internet users: just as the web has allowed businesses to sell and communicate globally, so it has given fraudsters the ability to plunder victims anywhere and set up crime networks that, previously, would have been impossible.
The web has become central to the smooth running of most developed economies, and the types of cybercrime have changed too. While 15 years ago the majority of digital crime was effectively a form of online vandalism, most of today's internet crime is about getting rich. "Now the focus is almost entirely focused on a some kind of pay-off," says David Emm,principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
That's causing significant costs to businesses and consumers. IBM and Ponemon Institute's2016 Cost of Data Breach Study found that the average cost of a data breach for the 383 companies participating increased from $3.79m to $4m over 2015: the average cost paid for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential information increased from $154 in 2015 to $158. All the organisations in the survey had experienced a data breach ranging from 3,000 to 101,500 compromised records, and the majority of the leaks were down to malicious attacks (as with many types of crime, the costs of cleaning up can be vastly higher than the loot that the hackers manage to get away with).
Data breaches aren't the only costs to business of online criminals: the FBI calculates that CEO email scams -- where criminals pose as senior execs and persuade finance managers to transfer huge sums to phoney bank accounts -- have hit tens of thousands of companiesand cost over $3.1bn since January 2015.
There's a significant cost to business of protecting against attacks, too: according to analyst firm Gartner, worldwide spending on security products and services will reach $81.6bn (£62.8bn) this year, up eight percent year-on-year thanks to increasingly sophisticated threats and a shortage of cybersecurity professionals.
Most internet crime is motivated by a desire for profit -- stealing banking credentials or intellectual property, or via extortion for example. But as online crime has grown it has also evolved -- or mutated -- into a set of occasionally overlapping groups that pose distinct threats to organisations of different sizes.
These groups have different tools, objectives and specialities, and understanding this can help defend against them.
Read on to find out about:
The web has become central to the smooth running of most developed economies, and the types of cybercrime have changed too. While 15 years ago the majority of digital crime was effectively a form of online vandalism, most of today's internet crime is about getting rich. "Now the focus is almost entirely focused on a some kind of pay-off," says David Emm,principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
That's causing significant costs to businesses and consumers. IBM and Ponemon Institute's2016 Cost of Data Breach Study found that the average cost of a data breach for the 383 companies participating increased from $3.79m to $4m over 2015: the average cost paid for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential information increased from $154 in 2015 to $158. All the organisations in the survey had experienced a data breach ranging from 3,000 to 101,500 compromised records, and the majority of the leaks were down to malicious attacks (as with many types of crime, the costs of cleaning up can be vastly higher than the loot that the hackers manage to get away with).
Data breaches aren't the only costs to business of online criminals: the FBI calculates that CEO email scams -- where criminals pose as senior execs and persuade finance managers to transfer huge sums to phoney bank accounts -- have hit tens of thousands of companiesand cost over $3.1bn since January 2015.
There's a significant cost to business of protecting against attacks, too: according to analyst firm Gartner, worldwide spending on security products and services will reach $81.6bn (£62.8bn) this year, up eight percent year-on-year thanks to increasingly sophisticated threats and a shortage of cybersecurity professionals.
Most internet crime is motivated by a desire for profit -- stealing banking credentials or intellectual property, or via extortion for example. But as online crime has grown it has also evolved -- or mutated -- into a set of occasionally overlapping groups that pose distinct threats to organisations of different sizes.
These groups have different tools, objectives and specialities, and understanding this can help defend against them.
Read on to find out about:
- Disorganised crime
- Organised crime
- Hacktivists
- Terrorists
- State-backed hackers
- Insider threats