14 DAY TRIAL // A study released by security firm NCC reveals the origins of most hacking operations and the estimated damages they cause to the global economy each year.
The numbers show that hackers from the UK cost the global economy over $2 billion (1.4 billion EUR) in the year that passed, counting a total of 23 million hack attempts.
While this puts the United Kingdom on the 15th place on a global chart, the first two positions are occupied by China and the United States, the operations launched by cybercriminals from these countries costing the global economy around $44 billion (31 billion EUR).
“Reading the papers each day, it’s easy to think of hacking as something that happens to us from afar; that we’re victims of foreign criminal gangs in developing countries. Yet hackers can be anywhere in the world, as our research illustrates, including on our own doorstep,” Rob Cotton, NCC Group’s chief executive said.
US and China are followed on the global list by Russia, Brazil, Italy, Netherlands, France, Denmark, Germany and India.
It’s somewhat surprising that so many highly developed European countries have such a great contribution to the hacking attempts recorded worldwide, counting around 200 million attempted hacks with consequences translating into costs of $16 billion (11 billion EUR) each year.
“Fighting this global threat will only work with global collaboration. We hear lots about governments wanting to work together and there’s a strong financial motivation to find this long-suggested global solution but progress is painfully slow,” Cotton added.
“I’m certain that when we look at these figures again the number of hacks and the cost to the global economy will have increased. I’m less certain that progress will have been made in the global battle against these hackers.”
Well, at least the sums aren’t as high as the ones published in the Norton Cybercrime Report back in September when they said that the direct costs generated by cybercrime on a global level were around $114 billion (80 billion EUR).