INDICATIONS emerged Thursday that about $500 billion is being lost yearly around the globe to cybercrimes.
According to a study conducted by a United States of America-based
security firm McAfee and the Centre for Strategic International Studies,
more data would however be needed to arrive at precise estimates, in
order to control the activities of the hackers.
The study stated that US economy loses some $100 billion to cybercrimes
and cyber espionage, including loss of key business data and
intellectual property.
The estimate was lower than some earlier reports which put the cost as
high as $1 trillion, but study authors said it was a matter of narrowing
the range of damage from cyber attacks.
“It will always be a range,” said James Lewis, a CSIS scholar on cyber security and co-author of the report.
“The data is either sparse or distorted.” But Lewis said the report
offers a better way to compare the cost of cybercrime to other types of
risks such as drug trafficking or other types of theft.
“We believe the CSIS report is the first to use actual economic
modelling to build out the figures for the losses attributable to
malicious cyber activity,” said Mike Fey, chief technology officer at
McAfee.
“Other estimates have been bandied about for years, but no one has put any rigor behind the effort.”
The report said the impact of cybercrimes includes loss of intellectual
property and confidential information; reduced trust for online
activities; additional costs for security, insurance and recovery; and
damage to reputations.
Lewis said the impact on business could translate into the loss of as
many as 508 000 jobs in the US, based on a government formula for the
ratio of exports to US jobs.
“The raw numbers might tell just part of the story, the effect of the
net loss of jobs could be small, but if a good portion of these jobs
were high-end manufacturing jobs that moved overseas because of
intellectual property losses, the effect could be wide ranging,”he said.
Culled from The Guardian
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