Cybercrime Costs to Soar to $2T By 2019

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert, CFO Magazine

Cybercrime will cost businesses over $2 trillion by 2019, almost four times the estimated cost of security breaches this year, according to a report by Juniper Research.

Most breaches will target existing information technology and network infrastructure, the U.K. research and analytics firm said. While attacks on mobile devices and the Internet of Things are being reported at an increasing rate, the number of infected devices is minimal compared to more traditional computing devices.

“Currently, we aren’t seeing much dangerous mobile or IoT malware because it’s not profitable,” the report’s author James Moar said in a news release. “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,” he added.

Juniper also noted that cybercrime has become increasingly more professional, with the emergence of cybercrime products such as malware creation software over the past year. The firm expects fewer — but more successful — casual activist hacks.

Other key findings include:

• Nearly 60% of anticipated data breaches worldwide in 2015 will occur in North America, but this proportion will decrease over time as other countries become both richer and more digitized.
• The average cost of a data breach will exceed $150 million by 2020, as more business infrastructure gets connected.