The world is embedded in the digital world. For example, almost everyone relies on the internet for necessities when the pandemic hit. Furthermore, more people rely on the digital world to connect with others.
Industry experts are building a legacy from society’s reliance on the digital world. This legacy might be something the future version of the world will remember its past by. Everyone must protect this digital legacy if people still want to continue living the lives they have today.
A Digital Legacy
No one knew that it would arrive at this, but our world is becoming increasingly digital every year that passes us by. It seems that this will be the legacy that human beings be known for years to come.
This digital legacy is connected to almost everyone in the world. Its accessibility can reach countries and span over continents. It’s a new life, and it’s a good one. But every legacy has its own set of problems, and the problem with the cyberworld (also commonly known as the ‘metaverse’) is the rampant crime within it.
The digital legacy that the world must aim to achieve is jeopardized by cybercrime. And if no one wants to solve it in the coming years, this legacy might just become a far-off memory.
Cybercrime
Cybercrime is hard to define simply because it’s something that experts haven’t fully understood yet. What defines a crime done on the internet exactly? Stealing digital assets such as cryptocurrency should indeed be considered a crime, but this currency has no physical manifestation.
No embedded cash can be withdrawn from such an account. Furthermore, how can one track that person? The person who committed the crime might be miles away for all you know. They can be in another country. And if they are, is stealing cryptocurrency a crime there? These are the complications that lie with cybercrime.
Many people are committing cybercrime every day. The number of exposed records in the US in 2020 alone is 155 million. This is just one crime committed, and thousands more exist out there. Some cybercrimes are centered around bullying and flaming others, while other crimes include malware. Many tend to think that hacking should be a crime, yet ethical hackers are out there doing this crime.
There might be no actual definition for cybercrime, but there is one thing that most countries in the world can agree on: cybercrime costs a lot of money.
Cost of Cybercrime
The cost of cybercrime cannot be estimated in mere millions. The billions measure it. Cybercrime accounts for over $3 billion lost dollars in 2019 alone in the United States. This number continues to increase as such crimes become harder to trace. It was enough for the country to state that cybercrime is a national security issue, and even the FBI has started a new department to combat it.
That’s a lot of money, $3 billion. But this is just pocket change for other countries that have been victimized by cybercrime. China is leading the world when it comes to the cost of cybercrime. It’s estimated that the country has lost a staggering $66 billion from such crimes. Brazil, which comes second, lost about $22 billion. So it’s not only the United States that’s suffering from these crimes but the whole world as well.
Countries aren’t the only ones affected by cybercrime. Individual companies and corporations are the main targets of this crime, and the world of banking and lending is the primary battlefield for hackers and malware.
Banking and Lending
Wars are now fought in the cyber world, and the war being waged by hackers exists primarily in one sector: banking and lending. Cripple this sector, and a country’s economy can easily collapse. This is how hackers worldwide aim to bring the new world to its knees.
This is why this sector is spending billions of dollars on cybersecurity. As more and more Americans continue to buy homes at higher values, more people on the internet find it attractive to attack mortgages. Currently, many in this industry are primarily protecting home loans. Another thing that the sector is saving is investments.
Investments come with hard-cold cash that can easily be withdrawn. But unlike loans, investments can be grabbed by hackers in simple ways, and soon enough, they can make it disappear through the money laundering process.
Banking and lending are the battlegrounds of cybercrime, and everyone’s doing their best to stop these hackers from winning. In the coming years, it will be tough to control cybercrime as more people resort to the digital world for their needs and wants during the pandemic. However, hand-in-hand we can stop cybercrime from spreading. We might never eradicate it, like the virus that exists in our world today, but hopefully, we can learn to maintain it.