What is YOUR Guess of the Losses From Cybercrime? TOO LOW!

How much does cyber crime cost us anyway?  I rant about it all the time, but really, in dollars, what does it cost?  Different researchers give different answers and your mileage may vary, but here are some answers:

• Cybercrime makes, AT LEAST, $1.5 trillion more than the drug trade
• Cybercrime would rank as the 13th largest economy in the world based on GDP, just behind Russia and if other estimates are correct, it would be the 5th largest economy,  bigger than the UK, France, Brazil and 180+ other countries
• Cybercrime is expected to reach $6 trillion by 2021, right behind the US and China.

Assuming you use the Internet, or at least a computer, you are likely part of the $1.5 trillion figure.  Or at least potentially.

The challenge is to get people to take the problem seriously.

A recent example in Denver was the story of a guy in the grocery store who took his eyes off his wallet for a minute (it was, apparently, in his shopping cart).  90 minutes later the crook had run up a $23,000+ bill on the stolen credit cards.  Worse yet, his bank, initially, would not give him back his money.  (After the story aired, including an interview with me,  on the local Fox affiliate, the bank changed its mind and credited his account).

I suspect he has a new appreciation for cybersecurity.

This story is repeated in our world on a daily basis.  After all, the $1.5 trillion loss does not happen to one person (unless he has a really large credit limit).  It happens via millions of small losses.

Rarely, people are targeted, but for the most part there is so much easy money out there that the bad guys don’t have to work very hard.

For example –

• you do have two factor authentication turned on for your
•    email?
•    Bank account?
•    Retirement account?
•    Brokerage account?
•    Amazon (Crooks have figured out how to get Alexa to buy them credit cards.  The technique is pretty cool)?
• You don’t reuse passwords between sites, do you?
• Do you use a password manager?

Just doing the simple stuff makes you a much less attractive target.

Source: Cybersecurityventures

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