Cybercrime Threats: Policy, Education, and Investigation

Introduction: The Growing Cybercrime Threat

Cybercrime is a growing threat characterized by increasing sophistication that makes it difficult to take a proactive stance on prevention. For instance, there are people in China whose job it is to obtain competitive information from companies based in the United States. Competitive information can be protected, proprietary data; the loss of which can cost companies millions of dollars in the short term, and even greater amounts over the long term. The scale of cybercrime impacting businesses ranges from simple pirating of entertainment such as music and movies—which can certainly be costly when it occurs on a large scale—to accessing databases that contain credit or personal information protected by law and ordinarily secured by a constellation of cyber strategies and teams of internet security professionals.

The cumulative cost of petty cybercrime is astonishingly high. The cost of organized, systematic attacks on digital privacy is staggering. Consider that activities that fall into these categories are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Taking over a database marketing system is only a short step away from taking over the technology information systems that control critical services such as electricity grids, banking systems, or military communications.

Scale and Types of Cyber Attacks

Within the past few years, several successful attacks on substantial digital information and communication systems have occurred. The fantasies portrayed in movies and on television today are not far removed from the actual incidents that occur. Indeed, crime is increasingly moving to the internet, along with many other activities and services in modern societies.

Cybercrime versus Natural Disasters

A popular belief is that the lion's share of cyber attacks and internet security breaches are not conveyed to the general public—or if they are, the disclosures come well after the fact, so that the information is yesterday's news and is quickly eclipsed by the next wave of social exigencies. While it is completely understandable that the government seeks to quell discussion about failures of security systems, this also works to reduce the overall sense of violation and alarm that citizens would be likely to experience if they knew the full extent of the onslaught of successful cyber attacks. Underreporting of breaches creates a false sense of security and masks the true scope of the problem.

Technology, Privacy, and Public Trust

To fully appreciate the extent of potential damage that can result from cyber attacks, one has only to recall the absolute breakdown of systems during times of natural disasters. Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy gave Americans a taste of society stripped of its capacity to communicate and provide essential services to a people isolated by large-scale disaster. Consider that natural disasters are indiscriminate, flattening everything in the area on which the full force of nature is let loose.

Contrarily, cyber criminals are able to be very discriminating with regard to the systems they take down, the order in which they take those systems down, and the degree to which they disable systems that could be used for backup or recovery. This precision represents a fundamentally different threat profile. While hurricane damage is random and widespread, cyberattacks can be surgically targeted at the most critical components of a system, maximizing disruption while minimizing digital footprints.