Week 6: Why cyber-crimes are severely under reported.

Why cyber-crimes are severely under reported. 

I was looking for some light reading last week when I came across an article at CBS.com titled “These Cybercrime Statistics Will Make You Think Twice About Your Password: Where’s the CSI Cyber team when you need them?”.  The author describes cyber-crime statistics that will make someone not in the know, jaw drop.  Me? I just shake my head and wonder what can be done to avoid becoming a statistic. 

 (The author also provides a link to IBM’s 2015 Cost of Data Breach Study).

As we advance in technology, we also increase the number of vulnerabilities that can be present simply because there are so many new avenues into the system or device that haven’t been realized, therefore tested. This means we can all expect a visit of some kind from Mr. Hacker.... 

“With 1.5 million annual cyber-attacks, online crime is a real threat to anyone on the Internet. That number means there are over 4,000 cyber-attacks every day, 170 attacks every hour, or nearly three attacks every minute” (CBS.com, 2015).

Because cyber-crimes are occurring at such a rapid pace, some of them if not more… are not even being reported to law enforcement.  Why? Would it do any good? I believe there are many reasons why this occurs and it depends on the type and severity of the crime that has occurred.  Lesser crimes such as, someone hacking into a personal device isn’t that big of an issue for law enforcement.  What I mean is this, yes, it is a crime but it isn’t such a big crime where law enforcement wants to spend many man hours working on it to solve.   They just don’t have the man power to put towards it. 

“80% or more of cyber-crimes go unreported due to lack of awareness of the crime or the ability to report it, embarrassment on the part of individuals, or fear of consumer backlash on the part of businesses”.

I can see this point, if a bank or Health care Co. got hacked, they may not want the bad publicity that comes with the hack.  They may try and keep it under wraps until they can perform as many security checks and audits as they can in order to determine the who, what, where and how much, before going public.

One thing is for sure, death is inevitable, those who pay taxes must pay them and you and I will become a victim of online theft in some fashion or another… OK, that’s three things.

Be prepared.. Get educated and lock your systems down.

More statistics to digest:

On a slightly smaller scale, cyber-crime reported to the FBI in 2013 totaled losses of over $781 million, with an average loss of nearly $3,000 per complaint. 

That includes:

$81 million taken by romance scammers, who target people on online dating sites, feigning love and then asking for money — averaging more than $12,000 per victim.

$51 million taken by auto scammers, who convince their targets to pay for cars that don't exist — raking in an average of $3,600 per victim.

$18 million in real estate rental scams which, like auto scams, attempt to convince buyers to pay for property that doesn't exist — to the tune of nearly $1,800 per victim.

$6 million taken by FBI scammers, who pretend to be government officials to intimidate and extort money — averaging nearly $700 per victim.

(CBS.com)