The Economic Cost of Cybercrime

Cyber criminals are developing and boosting their attacks at an alarming pace, exploiting the fear and uncertainty caused by the pandemic and unstable social and economic situation around the world. At the same time, the even higher dependency on connectivity and digital infrastructure due to the global lockdown increases the opportunities for cyber intrusion and attacks.

As this report shows, Irish businesses are extremely vulnerable to cybercriminals, they should be focusing their planned cyber security investments on the ability to detect and react to data-security breaches. In the current environment, it is not a question of ‘if’ an Irish business
will be the victim of a cyber-attack but a question of ‘when’. In fact, the ability of businesses to detect and react to an attack will be the key factor in limiting the impact.

As COVID-19 continues to persist globally, a further increase in cybercrime is highly likely in the near future. Attracted by the vulnerability related to working from home and the potential for increased financial benefit, cybercriminals are highly likely to build up their activities
and develop increasingly advanced and sophisticated ways of operating. They are likely to continue proliferating COVID-19-themed online scams and phishing campaigns.

Business email compromise schemes will also likely surge due to the economic downturn and shift in the business landscape, generating new opportunities for criminal activity.

In addition, now that COVID-19 vaccines and medication is widely available, it is highly probable that there will be another spike in phishing related to these medical products as well as network intrusion and cyberattacks to steal data.

Even when cases of the COVID-19 decline, cybercriminals will most certainly adapt their fraud schemes to exploit the postpandemic landscape aiming to target the largest possible number of victims.