The latest report from Computer Crime Research Center (CCRC) has projected that the cost of cybercrime will rise to $12 trillion by next year.
The CCRC report noted that aside from external market figures, the projection is also based on other cybersecurity research by CheckPoint and Orange Cyderdefense, which noted consistent growth in cyberattacks and ransomware in the past year.
Notably, the cost of cybercrime is feared to surge on the back of a rise in attacks enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and a 910% increase in monthly registrations for domains, both benign and malicious, related to ChatGPT, specifically in an attempt to mimic ChatGPT.
The AI concern
Highlighting the role of AI in the surging cybercrime market, the CCRC said:
- “In particular, the threat landscape surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expanding aggressively where attackers use sophisticated linguistic techniques, including increased text volume, punctuation, and sentence length. The trend suggests that generative AI allows threat actors to craft sophisticated and targeted attacks at speed and scale.
- “And as we move forward in 2024 and 2025 the market will see threat actors adopting AI to expand every aspect of their offensive toolkit. AI will be adopted to deliver more cost-efficient, rapid development of new malware and ransomware variants.
- “Deepfake technologies will take phishing and impersonation attacks to a new level. Businesses will embrace AI but will be threatened by its use in novel cyberattacks. There is also a risk that the dynamic character of AI-driven attacks could make static defense mechanisms ineffective.”
CCRC noted that the number of key events in 2023 about cyber threats has been overwhelming and versatile in terms of impact on an organization or government body.
It added that even though cybersecurity is now a board-level issue there needs to be greater involvement at the executive board level by driving cybersecurity risk governance and steering committees to help minimize the risks imposed on the company or government entity.
Other projections
The Research firm also projected that Cyber Extortion will remain prevalent, with a 30-50% increase, and affecting in the majority of cases Corporations, SMBs, and government entities. It added that as a result of the recent shift in growing economies regions like South Asia (namely India), Oceania and Africa will have the highest attacks.
- “Vertical segments covering manufacturing, retail, professional services, financial, and utilities will be the most vulnerable. This is partly driven by vulnerabilities across the legacy nature of their network, technology maturity, and elevated risk impact levels to the business as a result of cyber attacks.
- Hacktivism is rated high moving forward in 2024, where threat actors will continue to target either corporations or government bodies politically supporting certain entities. Predominately, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) continues to be utilized due to the high impact on business continuity,” it said.
The Computer Crime Research Center was created in 2001 to research legal criminal and criminological problems of cybercrime to render scientific and methodical aid and consulting. The Center accumulates experience and performs analysis of the results of scientific-practical research in counteracting and preventing computer crimes.