Cybercrime is continuously growing with the expansion of business networks and the internet. Currently, organizations of all sizes rely on their internet connectivity, data, and networks to conduct their businesses. From an international community perspective, cybercrime causes the global economy to incur an annual loss of about $445 billion, with businesses being damaged by intellectual property theft that exceeds a $160 billion loss to individuals (Bandler and Merzon, 2020). The threat keeps growing due to cybercriminals’ intention to exploit the existing network and online vulnerabilities in business networks. Further, businesses’ lack of resources and knowledge contributes to the challenge since one in four business owners has little or no understanding of the threat posed by cybercrime.
The link between national security and cybercrime is becoming an increasingly prevalent challenge from a national perspective. With the advancements in technology, the criminal ability to cause harm and annoyance to a country’s critical infrastructure and the people continues to undermine the dynamic instrumentalities (Schuh, 2019). Similarly, the national security profile of a country has been impacted by an increase in the parallel approaches to physical attacks with which cyber-attacks occur. Modern interconnectedness provides an almost parallel approach that causes uncertainties, offers undermining methods to a nation’s security, and is more damaging than physical attacks.
Cyber-attacks scope on towns and cities is now clearer from the hometown level. More than 70 percent of ransomware attacks in the U.S. are targeted at local and state governments (Muggah and Goodman, 2019). Cybercriminals are deploying distributed service denial attacks, ransomware, and associated off-the-shelf hacker tools that bugle and interrupt municipal networks. The digital arsenals threatening municipal networks are sourced from the deep web with fully automated weapons resulting in continuous attacks on local governments.
References
Bandler, J., & Merzon, A. (2020). Cybercrime investigations: A comprehensive resource for everyone. CRC Press.
Muggah, R., & Goodman, M. (2019). Our cities are under cyberattack. Here’s why – and what they should do about it. World Economic Forum. Web.
Schuh, J. (2019). Cybercrime. O’Reilly.