Bharat Bhise HNA – Why Cybercrime is Rising

Bharat Bhise HNA is a cybersecurity expert and we have had the great delight of sitting down with him for a chat recently about cybersecurity. I first met Bharat after he gave a great talk at a tech conference which I attended and I wanted to catch up with him to find out more about cybersecurity and most importantly, why cybercrime is on the rise. We have seen a massive increase in cybercrime in the last decade alone and each year there seems to be more and more attacks of this nature. So what is it that has lead to this sharp rise in cybercrime? Let’s take a look.

Ease of Attack

To any person who has some knowledge of hacking and nefarious intentions, committing a cybercrime is really not very difficult. When it comes to the big businesses out there, these clearly present a difficult challenge because hey have very tight cybersecurity measures in place. When it comes to residential homes, public wifi and small and medium sized businesses however, hackers know that there is either very outdated or non-existent security measures in place, which makes their life very easy indeed.

Low Risk

We know that law enforcement have massively invested in cybercrime units but in the main these attacks carry a very low risk. Most cybercriminals who have been caught over the years have only been caught because they attacked multiple times and eventually the law caught up with them. In most cases however cybercriminals are pretty well veiled. They don’t need to physically go and steal anything which of course greatly minimizes the risk of being recognized or caught, they can utilize a number of networks to mask their location and they can also, in many cases, make the attack without the victim being aware that it has even happened.

Information

The most popular form of cyberattack is a hack which seeks to steal personal information. In a business sense a cybercriminal can gain access to massive amounts of staff and customer information which can be used for identity fraud. In the case of residential homes, they can attack these servers and then gain access to just about everything that you have on your computer, worrying thought. Information that can be obtained can be used in numerous ways from fraud to direct financial theft.

Value of Information

Gaining someone’s identity is useful if you are part of a terrorist organization or if you are wanted for certain crimes in other countries, as well as being useful if you are an illegal immigrant. It is for this reason why information which can be obtained from a cyberattack has risen greatly in value and those who are doing the attacks are very likely to then sell this information on to the highest bidder.

Cybersecurity companies are of course redoubling their efforts in terms of the software that they create and the security that they can offer, in the wake of this big increase in cyberattacks which are taking place.