{"id":2482,"date":"2011-10-18T07:00:40","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T15:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=2482"},"modified":"2011-10-18T07:00:40","modified_gmt":"2011-10-18T15:00:40","slug":"security-whatever-number-you-pick-to-estimate-the-costs-of-cybercrime-its-costing-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/security-whatever-number-you-pick-to-estimate-the-costs-of-cybercrime-its-costing-a-lot\/","title":{"rendered":"Security: Whatever Number You Pick to Estimate the Costs of CyberCrime, it's Costing a lot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cybercrime is defined as any crime that involves a computer and a network, where the computer could be either the target of the crime or used to perpetrate the crime. \u00a0 It’s a broad definition.<\/p>\n

Ovum analyst Graham Titterington<\/a> said cybercrime was a “growing threat to business viability… Cyber criminals are graduating from stealing credit cards and banking credentials to targeting corporate plans and proprietary information. They want valuable information such as product and technology blueprints, customer lists, or information that can be used to embarrass or disadvantage a victim.” \u00a0Chatham House<\/a>, a UK-based think tank, recently published a call-to-action paper <\/a>on cybercrime, calling for cooperation between both governments and businesses in order to stop or at least slow the staggering amount of cybercrime.<\/p>\n

Cybercrime is clearly a problem, but being able to get a clear estimate of what the actual damages are has been difficult. \u00a0The US Department of Justice now tracks known incidents of cybercrime on its\u00a0website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2007, the GAO estimated that the cost of cybercrime in the U.S. was about $117 billion or about 1% of U.S. GDP. \u00a0That’s a lot, but how accurate is this number?<\/p>\n

In 2009, David DeWalt<\/a>, President of security firm McAfee, estimated <\/a>that the loss of intellectual property, such as trade secrets, due to cybercrimes exceeded $1 trillion annually, a much larger number than the GAO estimate. \u00a0Shortly after that report, even President Obama cited the trillion dollar number in one of his speeches. \u00a0And later that same year, Edward Amoroso, Chief Security Officer of AT&T,<\/a> told a US Senate Commerce Committee<\/a> that cybercrime has been increasing to the point where it poses a significant threat to both private and government institutions and commented that “last year the FBI announced that revenues from cyber-crime, for the first time ever, exceeded drug trafficking as the most lucrative illegal global business, estimated at reaping more than $1 trillion annually in illicit profits.”<\/p>\n

Blogger and security expert Richard Steinnom<\/a> questioned the $1 trillion as being too large of a number. \u00a0He wrote that “the number of $1 trillion — as in “cybercrime now generates $1 trillion a year for cybercriminals” — appears to be a myth, even it if is repeated by IT security and communication companies.” \u00a0$1 trillion would exceed all IT revenues for one year.<\/p>\n

A similar debate has been raging in the UK where the\u00a0UK Cabinet Office announced in April that cybercrime exceeded $43 billion<\/a> in the UK, but the announcement was quickly\u00a0derided <\/a>by\u00a0Peter Sommer<\/a> of the London School of Economics as an “unfortunate item of British Aerospace puffery”. \u00a0Sommer accused the the Cabinet Office of being a sales machine for the security company Detica.<\/p>\n

Now a new\u00a0study from Symantec<\/a> estimated that in 2010 $114 billion was lost collectively by 431 million people globally due to cybercrime. \u00a0That report also estimates that another $241 billion is spent in lost time trying to recover from cybercrime damage.<\/p>\n

So how much does cybercrime really cost? \u00a0A lot, but exactly how much is hard to measure. \u00a0The fact is that we don’t really have sufficient data to make an accurate estimate.<\/p>\n

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Cybercrime is defined as any crime that involves a computer and a network, where the computer could be either the target of the crime or used to perpetrate the crime. \u00a0 It’s a broad definition. Ovum analyst Graham Titterington said…<\/span><\/p>\n

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