Impact of Cybercrime on Society, Business, and Economy

This article explores the impact of cybercrime on society, business, and the economy. It discusses the consequences of cybercrime on reputation, employment, and competitive edge. It also delves into the economic implications of cybercrime on global economies.

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Introduction
The practice of crime and criminality has been associated with man for a very long time1.
This practice that often hides in the face of development often requires law enforcement to
brainstorm on smarter ways of handling it. One fact that all scholars agree on is nations that
experience high rates of crime have failed to develop economically. This is associated with the
impact of crime in the areas it occurs.
One such crime that continues to attract global attention is cybercrime. Cybercrime is the
use of a computer to commit as a tool or target in committing crimes. The term cybercrime can
be defined in a broad scope depending on the context of use2. Most scholars refer to cybercrimes
as computer crimes due to the use of computer in the process of committing the crime.
During the United Nations 10th Congress that was on prevention of crime, cybercrime
was defined in two ways which are; any unlawful behavior that is aimed at a computer system
and the information that is stored in it and any unlawful act that is committed using directly or
indirectly a computer system or computer network3.
These definitions, however, has raised debate in understanding and further definition of
cybercrimes, an example of a complex scenario would be if a person uses a computer screen to
murderer another person by hitting the other person on the head, should that be considered a
crime since the definition states that when a computer system is used in committing a crime that
is cybercrime.
1 Bantekas, I. (2017). Cybercrime and its sovereign spaces: an international law perspective. In Legal
Responses to Transnational and International Crimes. Edward Elgar Publishing.
2Gillespie, A. A. (2015). Cybercrime: key issues and debates. Routledge.
3 Schuilenburg, M. (2017). The securitization of society: crime, risk, and social order. NYU Press.

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Due to such questions bodies such as the Stanford Draft International Convention to
Enhance Protection from Cyber Crime and Terrorism defines cybercrime in article 1.1 as a crime
committed particularly in association with cyber systems. Due to the fact that the early
widespread, use and adoption of computers and the internet was in the United States, this nation
was the first to experience rampant crimes in this area.
One of the nations that are a victim to cybercrime is Australia. The Australian Criminal
Intelligence Commission has raised concerns over this issue indicating the need to deal with
cybercriminals who are constantly making profits from some Australians who do not even
recognize this activity. This paper will look at the impact of this crime to society, business and
economy respectively, referencing information from peer-reviewed articles, journals, and
relevant government sites.
Impact on Society
The rampant spread of cybercrime has had huge impacts on the society indicate as
indicated by statistics regarding cybercrime. Chuck Robins the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of
CISCO a global telecommunications officer in a conference indicated that they block 20 billion
threats a day on their customers' behalf4.
The University of Sydney, in a report on cybersecurity, indicates that approximately $76
billion used in illegal activities per year involved bit coin, which is used for trading that happens
online. Statistics for Cybersecurity Ventures has indicated that by 2021, cybercrime will cost the
world $6 trillion5.
4 Stratton, G., Powell, A., & Cameron, R. (2017). Crime and justice in digital society: towards a ‘Digital
Criminology’?. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6(2), 17-33.
5Yar, M., & Steinmetz, K. F. (2019). Cybercrime and society. SAGE Publications Limited.

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The impact of cybercrime in the society is far reaching with fewer incidences of reporting
due to reasons such as fear of losing reputation or embarrassment and the belief that the law
enforcement agencies are not capable of handling such issues. In the United States approximately
11% cybercrimes are reported out of the total number of crimes committed.
Some of these crimes include fraud, theft, espionage, child pornography and illegal
profiling amongst other crimes. The impact of cybercrime on the society has been increased due
to the presence of cyberspace which continues to increase as more and more computers continue
to be connected globally.
Some of the features that have enabled cybercrime to be of significant impact to the
society include globalization, distributed systems and networks and data trails6. The 5 most
attacked areas include financial institutions and services, government servers and information
database, manufacturing and transportation sector and business sector7.
The impacts of cybercrime include;
Identity and reputation damage: This has occurred in a situation where the cybercriminals
are targeting institutions or individuals in major institution in order to damage the reputation that
they have for malicious purposes. This has mostly been seen in social media where individuals
pretend to be politicians who they are not posting and tweeting controversial statements which
otherwise damage the reputation if the actual politicians.
Employment and Business opportunity loss: In some cases, hackers have been known to
invite themselves to interviews removing a sizeable number in order to create room and high
6 Stratton, G., Powell, A., & Cameron, R. (2017). Crime and justice in digital society: towards a ‘Digital
Criminology’?. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6(2), 17-33.
7 Ghernaouti-Helie, S. (2016). Cyber Power: Crime, Conflict, and Security in Cyberspace. EPFL Press.

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probability for themselves. Other cybercrimes include defamation which leads to loss of
employment in a scenario when the organization is looking to maintain its reputations, therefore,
it retrenches the employer whose reputation may generally affect the institution.
Emotional and psychological impact: Some of the worst experiences of politicians are
when their deep secrets are released online without their knowledge and with exaggeration.
When one realizes that their reputation is at stake or that wrong information about them is
circulating it leads to emotional imbalance and psychological stress and depression. Other
cybercrimes such as false threats have led to trauma yet the information that has been released
online is not even true. In Kenya, a country in Africa a student died as a result of false alarm
online of a malicious attack that made students run stepping on and hurting one another in their
pursuit for escape from the “said” danger.
Impact on Business
One of the areas that have been largely affected by cybercrime is the business sector, due
to the amount of financial wealth that is available in business systems and networks. For
businesses even, the tiny information is valuable for a cybercriminal.
According to statistics some of the most sold information in dark sites are confidential
business information, credit card reports and malicious codes for hacking specific business
institutions network. 25% of companies in the United States in a questionnaire stated to have
been victims of cybercrime8.
In Australia, approximately 50% of the companies have been victims of cybercrimes
according to PwC global survey which was taken in 123 countries9. The increase in cybercrimes
started in 2016 when Australia Radio Network indicated that cybercrimes had doubled, the
8Hopkins, M., & Dehghantanha, A. (2015, November). Exploit Kits: The production line of the
Cybercrime economy? In 2015 second international conference on Information Security and Cyber
Forensics (InfoSec) (pp. 23-27). IEEE.

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figures increased to indicate that approximately 693,052 businesses have experience cybercrime
leading to effects such as business disruptions, information loss, revenue loss, productivity loss
and loss of competitive edge amongst other10.
Loss of competitive edge: When hackers leak private and confidential strategies and
plans of companies on how they want to achieve their plans and have a market advantage, their
rivals are able to counter or adopt similar methods making them lose their competitive
advantage.
Business interruptions: When the reputation of a company is challenged or completely
destroyed due to cybercrimes, it takes the business a long time to recover. In some cases, the
business even fails to recover leading to its collapse due to lack of customers to purchase their
products.
Information loss: There are a group of cybercriminals who attack vital information to the
operation of the business. They may either delete, modify or alter the information as it is making
it difficult to analyses and obtain the originally intended information.
Revenue loss: Some companies spend a lot of revenue in trying to make up for their bad
reputation that has been passed on the internet or any networked platform. A lot of revenue may
also be spent in purchasing antiviruses or in paying cyber criminals so that they can release vital
information or systems that they hold belonging to a particular company.
Damaged brands: It takes a lot of efforts which consist of time and finance in building a
popular and quality brand by a company, yet cybercriminals just take moments to bring all that
9 Gaspareniene, L., & Remeikiene, R. (2015). Digital shadow economy: A critical review of the
literature. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(6 S5), 402.
10Cai, T., Du, L., Xin, Y., & Chang, L. Y. (2018). Characteristics of cybercrimes: evidence from Chinese
judgment documents. Police Practice and Research, 19(6), 582-595.

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effort down. Cybercriminals are counterproductive in the building of brands in well-established
businesses.
Impact on Economy
The encroachment of cybercrime to businesses has extended to affect the global economy
at a large scale especially for the third world or developing countries. The Centre for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS) indicated that in 2014 approximately $450 billion was lost to
cybercrime, this is 0.7% of the global economy and more than the yearly income of some
countries worldwide11. They approximate that the figure could have increased to $600 billion
which is 0.8% of the global GDP.
A lot of funds is spent in efforts to prevent and combat occurrences of cybercrimes which
affect the economy of countries, example an Internet Service Provider (ISP) indicated that they
carry out more than 80 billion malicious scans in their servers in avoiding malicious software
which are approximately 300,000 to a million12.
Banks that are key to the economy of countries are the most targeted areas and some
nations have been blacklisted in carrying out financial institution hacking, they include Russia,
China, Iran, and North Korea13.
Economies that have largely suffered from cybercrime are developing nations that have
been able to assimilate technology into their affairs, yet they have not completely understood the
11Sharma, A., & Tandekar, P. (2017). Cyber Security and Business Growth. In Business Analytics and
Cyber Security Management in Organizations (pp. 14-27). IGI Global.
12 Griffy-Brown, C., Lazarikos, D., & Chun, M. (2017). Cybercrime Business Models: Developing an
Approach for Effective Security against Better Organized Criminals. Journal of Applied Business and
Economics, 19(8).
13Moskowitz, S. (2017). Cybercrime and business: strategies for global corporate security. Butterworth-
Heinemann.

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negative implication of these technologies or they lack resources to secure their cyber systems
against sophisticated cybercriminals14.
Economies have continued to deteriorate as cybercriminals enjoy the introduction of
better cyber systems and computer networks. Steve Grobman the Chief Technology Officer of
McAfee attributes this introduction of better technology to have increased the efficiency of
crimes since the risk of getting caught has been reduced yet the profit is so high in case of a
successful cybercriminal act.
Europe as a continent suffers the most from cybercrime since 84% of the country’s GDP
is affected15. Some of the cybercrimes that currently have the greatest economic impact are
stealing of IP address, selling of confidential business information, manipulation of financial
transactions of publicly traded companies and the amount of finance that goes into recovering
from these attacks16.
Conclusion
Even though cybercrime is leading in developing crimes, it has attracted attention
globally on its ability to make hundreds of millions of people its victims17. Two-thirds of the
people online, approximately two billion, have been victims of this crime indicating how serious
it is and the impact it has already had while still developing.
14Lusthaus, J. (2018). Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime. Harvard University
Press.
15Arora, B. (2017). Cyber Crimes Schemes and Behaviors. Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Reviews, 82, 602.
16 Teoh, C. S., & Mahmood, A. K. (2018). Cybersecurity Workforce Development for Digital
Economy. The Educational Review, USA, 2(1), 136-146.
17 Montgomery, C. (2017). New Security for a New Era: An Investigation into Law Enforcement
Cybersecurity Threats, Obstacles, and Community Applications (Doctoral dissertation, Utica College).

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Cybercrime is a serious crime that continues to develop yet law enforcement agencies
have not yet figured out ways of dealing with this crime18. Some of the reasons that have
increased the rampant growth of cybercrime include: Availability and adoption of better
technologies by cybercriminals, the increase in the number of online or internet users ranging
from youths to old age adults, the ease of committing cybercrime has increased with the increase
in knowledge of operating complex computer machines and manipulation of computer programs,
increased number of cybercrime centers such as the ones located in China, Brazil ,Japan , Korea
and India amongst other nations.
Some of the major impacts of cybercrime on the society and business include loss of
revenues, disruption of business, loss of reputation, destruction of brands that have taken a lot of
efforts to build, psychological and emotional upset and information loss and modification.
This menace that has already attracted global menace needs to be dealt with considering
that it is very lucrative to cybercriminals. Some solutions to the menace of cyber criminals could
include: creation of awareness on the practice of cybercrime and cyberbullying, availing avenues
to report those who have committed this act globally, educating masses on tackling malware
resulting from cybercriminals and cautioning online users on the importance of the information
that they provide online.
If appropriate measures are not taken in dealing with cybercrimes, it will continue to
grow as the number of online users increase and the need and value for online services continue
to increase with businesses storing their sensitive information online.
18 An, J., & Kim, H. W. (2018). A data analytics approach to the cybercrime underground economy. Ieee
Access, 6, 26636-26652.

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Bibliography
An, J., & Kim, H. W. (2018). A data analytics approach to the cybercrime underground
economy. Ieee Access, 6, 26636-26652.
Arora, B. (2017). Cyber Crimes Schemes and Behaviors. Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Reviews, 82, 602.
Bantekas, I. (2017). Cybercrime and its sovereign spaces: an international law perspective.
In Legal Responses to Transnational and International Crimes. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Cai, T., Du, L., Xin, Y., & Chang, L. Y. (2018). Characteristics of cybercrimes: evidence from
Chinese judgment documents. Police Practice and Research, 19(6), 582-595.
Gaspareniene, L., & Remeikiene, R. (2015). Digital shadow economy: A critical review of the
literature. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(6 S5), 402.

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Ghernaouti-Helie, S. (2016). Cyber Power: Crime, Conflict, and Security in Cyberspace. EPFL
Press.
Gillespie, A. A. (2015). Cybercrime: key issues and debates. Routledge.
Griffy-Brown, C., Lazarikos, D., & Chun, M. (2017). Cybercrime Business Models: Developing
an Approach for Effective Security against Better Organized Criminals. Journal of Applied
Business and Economics, 19(8).
Hopkins, M., & Dehghantanha, A. (2015, November). Exploit Kits: The production line of the
Cybercrime economy? In 2015 second international conference on Information Security and
Cyber Forensics (InfoSec) (pp. 23-27). IEEE.
Lusthaus, J. (2018). Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime. Harvard
University Press.
Montgomery, C. (2017). New Security for a New Era: An Investigation into Law Enforcement
Cybersecurity Threats, Obstacles, and Community Applications (Doctoral dissertation, Utica
College).
Moskowitz, S. (2017). Cybercrime and business: strategies for global corporate security.
Butterworth-Heinemann.
Schuilenburg, M. (2017). The securitization of society: crime, risk, and social order. NYU Press.
Sharma, A., & Tandekar, P. (2017). Cyber Security and Business Growth. In Business Analytics
and Cyber Security Management in Organizations (pp. 14-27). IGI Global.

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Stratton, G., Powell, A., & Cameron, R. (2017). Crime and justice in digital society: towards a
‘Digital Criminology’? International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6(2), 17-
33.
Teoh, C. S., & Mahmood, A. K. (2018). Cybersecurity Workforce Development for Digital
Economy. The Educational Review, USA, 2(1), 136-146.
Yar, M., & Steinmetz, K. F. (2019). Cybercrime and society. SAGE Publications Limited.