Can we predict cyber-crime rather than simply respond to it?

This essay discusses the potential of predicting cyber-crime instead of simply responding to it. It explores real examples and provides insights into how this can be achieved. The essay covers the types of cyber-crime, its impact on individuals and organizations, and preventive measures. It also highlights the need for advanced security measures and the evolving nature of cyber-crime.

Can we predict cyber-crime rather
than simply respond to it Using real
examples to discuss how this can
happen?
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CONTENTS
TOPIC: “Can we predict cyber-crime rather than simply respond to it”........................................3
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Can we predict cyber-crime rather than simply respond to it? Using real examples to discuss
how this can happen.....................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
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TOPIC: “Can we predict cyber-crime rather than simply respond to it”
INTRODUCTION
Cybercrime is referred as a crime that includes a network or computer. It is also known as
computer oriented crime which may threaten the security of an individual or a business and
influence their financial health. Surrounding the cybercrime, there are various privacy concerns
when confidential information is disclosed or intercepted, lawfully or otherwise. There are four
major types of cybercrime including privacy, financial, cyber terrorism and hacking (Akhgar,
Staniforth and Bosco, 2014). This is an essay report which is based on the topic "can we protect
cyber crime rather than simply respond to it using real examples to discuss how this can happen".
This report includes information about cyber crime, the way it increases day by day, causes and
its preventive measures. Apart from this, the question is answered by using real examples about
how can we protect cyber crime instead of simply responding to it and the way it can happen.
MAIN BODY
Can we predict cyber-crime rather than simply respond to it? Using real examples to discuss how
this can happen
Cyber crime is also known as computer oriented crime, it is a crime which involves a
network and a computer. The computer could have been involved in the crime, or it could be the
target. Computer oriented crime may threaten an organisation's security or a person and financial
health. Many privacy concerns are there surrounding cybercrime when the confidential
information is disclosed or intercepted, lawfully or otherwise. Cyber crime causes a significant
risk to organisations. Cyber criminal even hacked the entire system of an organisation. There are
many types of cyber crime which are as follows: Phishing- it is a kind of social engineering
attack which used steal data of the user, including credit card number and login. It happens when
an attacker, camouflaged, dupes the victim into opening instant messages, emails or text
messages (Amosun, Ige and Choo, 2015).
Misusing person information- cyber criminals misuses the personal information of the
victims for their greed. They steal all the money of the victim. Hacking- cyber criminals hack the
computer, smartphones, social media handle, bank information and etc. Then they use that
information in a very devastating manner. Hacking is typical in nature. Spread inciting terrorism
and hate- cyber criminals spread terrorism and hate to instigate people. Distribute child
pornography- child pornography is the pictures of children indulged in sexual activities, traded
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across the internet. Grooming- cyber grooming is befriending a young one online to ease online
sexual contact or physical meetings with them, their goal just of committing sexual abuse. They
befriend someone and then builds an emotional link just to assault them sexually in future. Cyber
crimes can happen from individuals to organisations. Though law enforcement bureau trying to
overcome this problem, it is yet growing rapidly and many organisations and Individuals have
become victims. One of the ways to stop this cyber crime and to protect the sensitive information
is making use of impenetrable security which uses unified system of hardware and software to
certify information accessed through the internet (Hewes Jr, 2016). Main cause of cyber crime is
that cyber criminals want to make money easily. There targets are usually rich organisations like
casinos, financial firms, banks or rich people where a big amount of money move daily.
Investigation of such criminals is tough. So, the cyber crimes increase across the world. And for
hackers it is easy to access the data, cause data stores at a very small place.
In the modern era, technology plays crucial role as the daily life of an individual rely on it.
People are now more using internet and depend on it. Rapid growth and development in
technology have provided wider opportunities as well as efficient sources to organisations of all
size. However, these technologies have bought unprecedented threat. It is an unlawful act in
which computers are utilised either as a target or tool or both. Criminals are exploiting the
convenience, anonymity and speed of internet, commit different activities which pose real threat
to the victims globally. Cyber crime includes phishing, illegal downloading, fraud due to debit
card, credit card, distribution of viruses, bank robbery, child pornography etc. Where rate of
return on investment is high and risk is low, individual always takes benefit of the situation, and
because of this, Internet crime takes place (Hille, Walsh, and Cleveland, 2015). It is a hazard
against distinct organisations and individuals whose computers are inter connected to internet
and specifically mobile technology. It is a dangerous crime that includes digital devices.
Currently, it is observed that highly complex cybercriminal networks are there which brings
together people all over the world in real time in order to commit crimes. In the current
competitive business environment, since a lot of information processing rely on utilisation of
information technology, the prevention, control as well as investigation of activities associated
with cyber is crucial to the success of a business entity, people and government agencies. The
maintenance and procurement of a skilled cyber crime expert by business enterprises as well as
government cannot be exaggerated.
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Earlier, it was mainly committed by small groups or individuals but in present, there is
complex cybercriminal networks that bring people together at global level to commit crimes. The
people who are indulge in cyber crime are not motivated by expertise or ego. But, the want to
utilise their knowledge in order to gain profits instantly (Ismail, and et. al., 2017). The use their
capabilities tu to deceive, snip and exploit individuals as define it as an easy way to get money
without doing honest work. It is broadly categorised in three groups including crime against
property, individual and government. Individual type of cybercrime can take place in the form of
cyber stalking, trafficking, distributing and grooming. Today, the agencies which are associated
with law enforcement are considering this crime very serious and they work towards joining
forces all over the world to reach as well as arrest the committers who commit this crime.
Property cybercrime is related to the crime such as pickpocket and steal, the offenders resort
to robbing and stealing. It includes misuse of credit card by cyber criminals to make purchases
online, they can also steal bank details of a person and drain off money to their bank, run a scam
to get naive individuals to part with their earned money and use a malicious software in order to
gain access to the website of company or disturb the system of a firm. The crime which is
committed against the government is stated as cyber terrorism. In case the criminals are
successful in it, then they can damage the hardware and software similar as the vandals’ damage
property offline. Hacking is the most common type of cybercrime which is categorised as
punishable and wrongdoing as such. It is distinct from ethical hacking which is utilised by many
organisations in order to check their security protection of internet. In this, variety of software
are utilised by criminals to enter into computer of a person (Nasution and Bazin, 2014).
Theft is the another type of cybercrime which takes place when an individual violate
copyrights as well as download movies, software, games and music. Cyberstalking is a kind of
online harassment in which the victim is endangered so as to barrage the offline messages as well
as females. These stalkers usually know their victims, and despite to resorting offline stalking,
internet is utilised by them to stalk. Identity theft is also a type of cybercrime which is the main
problem with individuals who are using internet for banking services and cash transactions. In
this, the data is assessing by the criminals about an individual's bank account, debit card, social
security, credit card, full name as well as other sensitive information in order to buy things online
in the name of victim and drain off money. In the identity theft, the information of a person can
use fraudulently to apply for credit, got Medical services or file taxes (Network, 2018). It can
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result into major financial loss and can even spoil the credit history of victim. There are many
techniques which can be adopted by organisations all individuals to prevent cyber crime. The
uses of computer should use firewall in order to protect their computers or system from hackers.
The organisation should install antivirus software like Norton antivirus or McAfee security in
order to protect their system from hackers.
Apart from this using only secured website is also one of the way through which cyber
crime can be prevented. Use of encryption for the sensitive files like tax returns as well as
another financial records, store data in different locations and take regular back up of all the
important data will help in protecting data from criminals (Penny, 2016). The cybercrime is
evolving as a very serious threat which is originated from computer in opposition to two
computer system, website or an individual computer which compromises integrity,
confidentiality or availability of system as well as the information stored on it. Mainly the target
of cyber criminals are rich organisations or individuals like financial firms, casino and banks
where large amount of money inflow and outflow daily and hack the sensitive data or
information. Unauthorised access to a computer system increases the possibilities of breach
because of complex technology. In hacking, the hackers can steal retina images, access codes,
advanced voice recorders etc. that make fool biometric systems very easily and bypass firewalls
could be used to get pass many of the security systems.
While cybersecurity is considered an issue or problem primarily for information technology
team, it is an agenda item these days for complete c- suite. The cybercrime is growing through
increasingly sophisticated technologies in addition to this, in social media, mobility usage and
rapidly expanding connectivity. These all are in the hands of online criminal networks. In order
to stay ahead from the criminals, an intelligent as well as evolutionary approach to cyber security
is important. For large organisations and government institutions, cybercrime has enormous
related costs, with United States organisations having high an average cost of cybercrime, that is,
17.36 million dollars, followed by Germany, i.e., 17.36 million dollars and the United Kingdom,
7.21 million dollars (Singer, and Friedman, 2014). The large scale attacks involved botnets
where similar actions are performed by many host. The current responses to cyber crime are
reactionary or defensive. That means, the attacks are analysed and removed only after the
systems that have been exploited. The common defence strategies involve detection and
prevention tools of intrusion like utilisation of firewalls, antivirus software air and access
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controls. However, these are time intensive, costly as well as becoming more ineffective as cyber
attacks become large, harder to detect and more coordinated. There are some major examples of
cybercrime (Wall, 2015).
In year 2013 - 2016, a data breach is experienced by Yahoo which resulted in theft of around
accounts of 3 billion users. For some among these accounts, the attackers steal private
information and passwords that could be utilised to access the accounts of users in other services
online. On the dark web, much of this data or information is available either for free or for some
cost. The another example is WannaCry attack in year 2017, which allegedly launched through
North Korea, that unleashed a kind of ransomware which locks down the content on device of
user along with rapidly spread itself. It infected around 300000 computers all over the world and
the users asked to pay a much amount to decrypt as well as restore the data. Some level of cyber
incident response capabilities is developed by most of the organisations. Avoiding a crisis
associated with cyber crime often comes down to managing properly a cyber incident after,
before and during it unfolds (Skopik, Settanni, and Fiedler, 2016).
There are many companies which track data breaches. For instance, the risk based security
reported large number at 6515 total breaches as well as 5 billion exposed records. Ransomware is
one of the well-established type of attack in which a decline has been seen in year 2018.
Distributed denial of services is the another attack which is very well known. Its examples range
from education to email to banking services to software services. Business email compromise
where the workforce is deceived in sending money or funds to attackers posing as workers of the
company also grew. According to the Internet crime report of FBI in year 2018, more than 20000
incidents were reported in United States which resulting in around 1.3 billion dollars in losses.
Many of the organisations depend on cloud services for their operations and as an outcome, they
have become a target for attackers. One of the largest domain registrar, GoDaddy has
experienced data breach in October 2019. The company found an unauthorised access when the
security team spotted some suspicious activities on its server. In respond to this, the company
provide express malware removal and website security deluxe at no cost. These tools help the
users to audit their date on website and alert them about security threats or vulnerabilities
(Thakar, Joshi, and Dobariya, 2019).
Apart from this, the mass breach was found by cyber risk assessment company, Cyble. It is
found that zoom credentials like personal meetings URLs, passwords and host keys are being
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sold on dark web as well as on different hacking forums. As reported through bleeping computer,
the information was stolen by credential stuffing attack in which the hacker attempt to access
account by utilising information and accounts that have been compromise previously in other
branches of data. Cyber criminals set fake online shopping websites or send messages which
look real to engage online shoppers into purchasing things which never arrived and to receive
individuals into administering personal details (UZOKA, 2020). an another example of
organisation who experience data breach is Marriott international which impacts around 5.2
million guest of the hotel. The breached information includes loyalty account information,
contact details and some additional personal details like birthdays and gender. The company
investigate the incidents and detected signs of unauthorised activity which are going back 4
years. It is a significant enhancement in time to detect as well as respond to data breach.
CONCLUSION
As per the above mentioned report, it has been concluded that cyber crime is a crime that
cause harm to networks, systems as well as users. It is a computed oriented crime that cause
harm to systems of individuals and business entities and hack and theft personal information or
data about the users. Due to cyber crime, the organisations face huge financial losses which
impacts the overall performance of company.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journal
Akhgar, B., Staniforth, A. and Bosco, F. eds., 2014. Cyber crime and cyber terrorism
investigator's handbook. Syngress.
Amosun, P.A., Ige, O.A. and Choo, K.K.R., 2015. Impact of a participatory cyber crime
prevention programme on secondary school students’ attainment in crime prevention
concepts in civic education and social studies. Education and Information
Technologies, 20(3), pp.505-518.
Hewes Jr, C.A., 2016. Threat and challenges of cyber-crime and the response. SAM Advanced
Management Journal, 81(2), p.4.
Hille, P., Walsh, G. and Cleveland, M., 2015. Consumer fear of online identity theft: Scale
development and validation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 30, pp.1-19.
Ismail, K.A., and et. al., 2017. Security strategies for hindering watering hole cyber crime
attack. Procedia Computer Science, 124, pp.656-663.
Nasution, F.B.B. and Bazin, N.E.N., 2014. Adjusting ICT Capacity Planning by Minimizing
Cyber Crime Effects in Urban Area: A System Dynamics Approach. Proceeding of the
Electrical Engineering Computer Science and Informatics, 1(1), pp.40-45.
Network, C.C.T.T., 2018, July. Assessment of Group Dynamics During Cyber Crime Through
Temporal Network Topology. In Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling: 11th
International Conference, SBP-BRiMS 2018, Washington, DC, USA, July 10-13, 2018,
Proceedings (Vol. 10899, p. 401). Springer.
Penny, C., 2016. The Organization of Cyber-Crime. York University Criminological
Review, 1(1), pp.67-85.
Singer, P.W. and Friedman, A., 2014. Cybersecurity: What everyone needs to know. oup usa.
Skopik, F., Settanni, G. and Fiedler, R., 2016. A problem shared is a problem halved: A survey
on the dimensions of collective cyber defense through security information
sharing. Computers & Security, 60, pp.154-176.
Thakar, H.K., Joshi, R.A. and Dobariya, A., 2019, March. An Analysis on Scope of Cyber
Security. In 2019 6th International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global
Development (INDIACom) (pp. 612-615). IEEE.
UZOKA, N.C., 2020. CYBER SECURITY AND LATEST DEVELOPMENT: TOWARDS
EFFECTIVE GLOBAL REGULATION AND GOVERNANCE IN
CYBERSPACE. INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF LAW AND JURISPRUDENCE
(IRLJ), 2(2).
Wall, D.S., 2015. The Internet as a conduit for criminal activity. Information technology and the
criminal justice system, Pattavina, A., ed, pp.77-98.
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