Cost of cybercrime to top two trillion dollars by 2019

Cybercrime is a growing threat to corporations and consumers, who are increasingly using online methods to run their businesses and lives. With the advent of mobile computing, this is only likely to become more common.

In the study, ‘The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Financial and Corporate Threats and Mitigation’, Juniper Research estimates that by 2019 the cost of data breaches will reach $2.1 trillion – four times the total expected for 2015. The average cost of a data breach is expected to exceed $150 million by 2020 as more business infrastructure is connected.

The majority of breaches will come, they say, not from new mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) technology, but from existing information technology and networks.

“Currently, we aren’t seeing much dangerous mobile or IoT malware because it’s not profitable,” says report author James Moar. “The kind of threats we will see on these devices will be either ransomware, with consumers’ devices locked down until they pay the hackers to use their devices, or as part of botnets, where processing power is harnessed as part of a more lucrative hack. With the absence of a direct payout from IoT hacks, there is little motive for criminals to develop the required tools.”