Cybercrime To Cost Over $10 Trillion Annually By 2025

According to a report published by Cybersecurity Ventures, global cybercrime costs will grow by 15% per year over the next five years, reaching US$10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from a ‘mere’ US$3 trillion in 2015.

This prediction is part of a special report conducted by Cybersecurity Ventures and sponsored by INTRUSION, Inc.

This incredible figure represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the damage inflicted from natural disasters in a year, and will be more profitable to the criminals behind it than the global trade in all major illegal drugs combined.

“Cybercrime costs include damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement, fraud, post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, and reputational harm,” says one business analyst.

Arvian Research has stated that Internet penetration and massive digitisation is changing the landscape of the global cybersecurity landscape.

“It is a fact that there is growing vulnerabilities in all spheres of activity. Besides damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement and fraud, cybercrime costs include post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, and reputational harm” the research group said.

INTRUSION, Inc President and CEO Jack B. Blount said cybercriminals know they can hold businesses and the economy hostage through breaches, ransomware, denial of service attacks and more.

“This is cyberwarfare, and we need to shift our mindset around cybersecurity in order to protect against it,” Blount added.

Organized cybercrime entities are joining forces, and the likelihood of detection and prosecution is estimated to be as low as 0.05 percent in the U.S., according to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Risk Report.

“Every American organization — in the public and private sector — has been or will be hacked, is infected with malware, and is a target of hostile nation-state cyber intruders,” continues Blount, who is also the former CIO at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Jack B. Blount’s assertion is backed up by some of the nation’s top cyberwarfare and cybersecurity experts, and Fortune 500 chief information security officers, in a roundtable discussion which recently aired on the Cybercrime Radio podcast channel.

Cybersecurity Ventures and INTRUSION, Inc. have partnered on a series of initiatives aimed at providing thought leadership and guidance to CISOs and cybersecurity teams in the U.S. and globally.

Cybersecurity Ventures is the world’s leading researcher and publisher covering the global cyber economy, and a trusted source for cybersecurity facts, figures, predictions, and statistics. INTRUSION, Inc. is a global provider of entity identification, high-speed data mining, cybercrime and advanced persistent threat detection products.

This article first appeared in the NFA Post and is republished with permission