This week hackers implemented an attack on Gmail users that used a fake authorization for Google Docs to lure users into giving over their login information. Google shutdown the operation quickly, but not before it had snared some unsuspecting users. The cost of global cybercrime is rising, with estimates for 2016 at around $460 billion and projections for 2019 at a stunning $2 trillion. Steve Morgan writes at Forbes:
From 2013 to 2015 the cyber crime costs quadrupled, and it looks like there will be another quadrupling from 2015 to 2019. Juniper research recently predicted that the rapid digitization of consumers’ lives and enterprise records will increase the cost of data breaches to $2.1 trillion globally by 2019, increasing to almost four times the estimated cost of breaches in 2015.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) says a significant portion of cybercrime goes undetected, particularly industrial espionage where access to confidential documents and data is difficult to spot. Those crimes would arguably move the needle on the cyber crime numbers much higher.
Large banks, retailers, and federal agencies make the headlines when they are hacked – but all businesses are at risk. According to Microsoft, 20% of small to mid sized businesses have been cyber crime targets.
Read more here.
