While cybercrime has been an issue for decades, several major trends have caused it to escalate rapidly into one of the most pressing economic and national security problems in the modern world:

• Digital Transformation of Everything: As more daily activities migrate online, from work and education to commerce, healthcare, and civic services, there are vastly more sensitive data and critical systems that can be targeted. Everything from smart cities to industrial control systems is now vulnerable.
• Sheer Scale of Connected Devices: The proliferation of IoT, with over 25 billion devices projected by 2030, exponentially expands the global attack surface. These devices often have poor security hygiene, allowing them to be leveraged en masse for malicious botnets and DDoS attacks.
• Pandemic-Driven Digital Adaptations: Remote work policies and online schooling adopted during COVID-19 accelerated digitization timelines by years in months. This created security gaps that cybercriminals eagerly exploited. Ransomware attacks doubled in 2020 compared to the year prior.
• Monetization of Hacking Skills: The rise of cybercrime-as-a-service platforms, stealthy crypto miners, and thriving illegitimate markets optimize criminal efforts into profitable global enterprises. The skills of even amateur hackers can now directly support ultra-wealthy organized crime syndicates.
• State-Sponsored Cyber Threats: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have made cyber espionage, information operations, and digital offensive capabilities a core part of their 21st-century warfare doctrines. Their state-backed hacking poses national security risks far beyond just theft.
• Jurisdictional Safe Havens: Some countries with authoritarian policies, weak rule of law, or strategic symbiosis with cybercriminals provide safe operating environments. This impedes attribution and international cooperation necessary to curb transnational cyber-enabled crimes.

Cybercrime has evolved from an opportunistic single-hacker model to highly sophisticated global digital threats that endanger critical infrastructure, national economies, and democratic institutions worldwide.

Why is cybercrime a threat to society?

Cybercrime poses a significant threat in today’s digital world for several reasons. As technology and internet usage have expanded exponentially, so too have the opportunities for bad actors to commit crimes remotely through digital means.

Some of the biggest societal impacts of the rising cyber threat include:

Financial damage

Cybercrime results in massive financial losses each year. Malicious hackers steal credit card numbers, bank login credentials, personally identifiable information, and more to profit from illegal online activity.

The damages add up to billions globally on an annual basis. Victims of identity theft face long-term financial and personal issues from having their private data compromised.

Loss of trust in technology

When data breaches and cyber attacks continue to make headlines, it erodes the public’s confidence that their sensitive information is truly secure online.

People become hesitant to conduct financial transactions, store important documents digitally, or interact freely on social media for fear of being hacked. Over time, this loss of trust in technology could significantly impact economic growth and technological progress if addressed.

National security concerns

State-sponsored hacking groups target critical infrastructure like power grids, transportation networks, and government systems. They may seek sensitive military or foreign policy secrets through cyber espionage.

In the wrong hands, infiltrated networks could potentially be used to undermine stability or launch cyber warfare operations during times of conflict. Federal agencies must spend large amounts of their budget on cyber defense annually to protect against these advanced persistent threats.

Social consequences

Cybercriminals often use technology to facilitate or amplify real-world harms. For example, the rise of deepfake technologies enables realistic falsified media that could damage reputations or spark civil unrest. Cyberbullying and online harassment particularly impact youth mental health.

Human traffickers utilize the anonymity of the dark web to exploit victims illegally. Without proper safeguards, the social consequences of cybercrime will likely grow more severe over time.

What is a cybercrime in the world today?

Cybercrime encompasses a wide range of illicit activities through computing devices and networks. Below are some of the most common types seen today and how cybercriminals are exploiting new technologies:

Hacking and intrusions

Unfortunately, malware attacks, phishing scams, and ransomware infections are all too common. Cybercriminals use these intrusion techniques to access private systems and data without authorization for profit or malicious purposes.

Identity theft

Stealing personally identifiable information like social security numbers, birth dates, and credit card details enables thieves to impersonate victims and wreak financial havoc. Synthetic identity fraud, which fabricates identities from compiled real and fake credentials, is an evolving threat.

Financial crime

In addition to credit card fraud and money laundering online, cryptocurrency presents new opportunities for cybercriminals to receive and conceal ill-gotten funds anonymously. Phishing scams targeting cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets have become more prevalent.

Intellectual property violations

Piracy of copyrighted software, media, and publications remains widespread. However, some specialized cybercriminal groups also steal commercially valuable trade secrets, design plans, and scientific research through targeted network intrusions of companies and government facilities.

Cyber-enabled crime

As technology advances, crimes occurring both online and in the physical world will become harder to distinguish. For example, geofencing tools could enable stalking or SWATing through false emergency calls.

Deepfakes may be used to manipulate dating app users. The Internet of Things brings new attack surfaces as well for compromising connected devices.

Hacktivism and state-sponsored activity

Politically motivated hacker collectives and covert government hacking squads alike steal data and disrupt critical systems. Their cyber espionage operations and distributed denial-of-service attacks pose challenges for policymakers seeking to deter and attribute such activities.

The Growing Threat of Ransomware

One of the fastest-growing cybercrime threats witnessed in recent times is ransomware attacks. In these incidents, malicious software deployed by cybercriminals encrypts files on an infected system and demands payment of a ransom, typically in bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, in exchange for the decryption key.

Attack	Date	Impact
Colonial Pipeline	May 2021	Shutdown nation’s largest fuel pipeline, causing gas shortages on the east coast of the US.
JBS Foods	June 2021	Forced closure of several meat processing plants, further straining global meat supplies.
Kaseya’s supply chain attack	July 2021	I have impacted up to 1500 businesses by exploiting the Kaseya remote management tool.

Ransomware costs have skyrocketed for both companies and governments. Rising ransom demands, increased sophistication of attack techniques and the proliferation of ransomware as a service model have all fueled threat growth.

Unless decisive technical and policy measures are taken, ransomware is projected to remain the costliest cybercrime in the coming years based on current trends.

Combating Cybercrime Challenges

While cyber threats evolve at an unprecedented pace, international coordination to combat cybercrime has many hurdles:

• Attribution of attacks to specific groups or nation-states is very difficult due to the use of proxies, encryption, and lack of standardized reporting.
• Jurisdictional complexities arise when criminals operate across many countries behind anonymous digital identities.
• Differing legal systems, priorities and technical capabilities between nations hamper efficient investigations and prosecution.
• Safe havens exist where there is little rule of law or enforced penalties for cybercrimes. Dark web marketplaces host criminal services with near impunity.
• The private sector has a major incentive to underreport breaches which obscures the true scale of damage and weakens aggregate data for policymaking.

Conclusion

Cybercrime remains one of the hardest challenges of the digital era due to its complexity, global scale, and rapid evolution. By fostering multistakeholder cooperation through capacity building, sharing security practices, and attributing malicious activities. Hardening critical infrastructure nations can start to tip the odds back in favor of the defender. With determined effort, a safer cyber realm is an achievable goal.