I like to sometimes look back at old news stories to check for predictions and see how far off or close did the journalist or researcher get their prediction. According to BBC back in 2011 (8 years ago) Cyber Crime cost Britain £27 billion. Here is an extract from article
“Cyber crime costs the UK economy £27bn a year, the government has said. The figures, published for the first time, are a mid-range estimate and the real cost could be much higher. They are made up of £21bn of costs to businesses, £2.2bn to government and £3.1bn to citizens. Security minister Baroness Neville-Jones said the government was determined to work with industry to tackle cyber crime.”
So how did the government tackle cybercrime in those past 8 years? Well according to the statistics not particularly well.
“In 2017 around 17 million UK residents were victims of cybercrime, with around £130 billion being stolen.”
Wow so in 8 years we saw an increase of nearly 500% – I am clearly in the wrong sector of IT and so is the advisory firm that was helping the government in 2011 reduce UK cybercrime. In another recent report it stated “When it comes to businesses, the 2018 Cyber Security Breaches Survey estimates that two in five businesses have been subject to some kind of cybercrime within the past twelve months. There is an average cost of around £3000 per business per cybercrime, which adds up to billions of pounds, not to mention the personal costs of consumers losing data or becoming victims of fraud.”
So clearly cybercrime is on the rise and it doesn’t look like it will go away. However, there are some good practices Individuals and corporations can implement to reduce the likelihood of them becoming a victim of cybercrime. Ensure all your devices have latest anti-virus software, firewalls, password protected, and don’t download or open attachments from people or companies you don’t know. If something looks suspicious it most likely is. Common sense isn’t common but look at sender address and be aware of common scams.
