2022 Cybercrime Report | Ransomware Damages Projected to Increase 130-fold Within a Decade

"If it were measured as a country, then cybercrime would be the world's third-largest economy after the U.S. and China." ——Steve Morgan, Founder of Cybersecurity Ventures

Recently, Cybersecurity Ventures, a cybersecurity research and market intelligence firm, released its 2022 Official Cybercrime Report. This report is based on historical cybercrime data, including recent year-over-year growth, the dramatic increase in organized crime syndicate activity, and a projection of the cyber attack surface for 2025 relative to last year.

Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that global cybercrime costs will grow by 15% per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion USD in 2015.

Global cybercrime damage is expected to reach $8 trillion USD annually by 2023, representing the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risking incentives for innovation and investment, and being exponentially larger than the damage inflicted by natural disasters in a single year, while also being more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.

▌Ransomware

With ransomware groups steadily refining their malware payloads and associated extortion activities, a new attack will occur every 2 seconds. The costs of these crimes will grow by 30% year-over-year over the next decade.

According to the World Economic Forum's "Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2022" report, 80% of cybersecurity leaders view ransomware as a significant threat to public safety.

Ransomware damage is projected to rise from $325 million USD in 2015 to $265 billion USD by 2031.

▌Highest Risk Sectors

Rating agency Moody's stated in a report on September 29, 2022, that approximately $22 trillion USD of global debt is exposed to "high" or "very high" cyber risk, with hospitals and public utilities deemed to be at the greatest risk. A press release from Reuters also noted that of the $80 trillion USD of debt across 71 sectors monitored by the rating agency, more than a quarter (28%) falls into these two highest risk categories.

According to statistics, public utilities scored the highest in terms of cyber risk:

• Critical infrastructure—including electricity, gas, water, and hospitals—all face very high cyber risks.

• Banking, telecommunications, technology, chemicals, energy, and transportation services also face high cyber risks.

Furthermore, the immense danger faced by public utilities is an "exponential impact across the entire economy."

▌The Talent Crisis

The number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs grew by 350% from 1 million in 2013 to 3.5 million in 2021. It is estimated that the same number of positions will remain open over the next five years.

CISOs at large enterprises are also changing jobs faster than most cybersecurity practitioners, with 24% of Fortune 500 CISOs lasting just one year on average in their roles.

Retention is proving to be as challenging as recruitment in the highly competitive cybersecurity market.

Over the next decade, cyberattacks will intensify, bringing unpredictable economic losses. In the face of a continuous global shortage of cybersecurity talent, the cost of corporate security defenses will also continue to climb. While growing their business and undergoing digital transformation, enterprises will face larger and more uncontrollable risks.

During the construction of security defense systems, Securitycompass (PyXAP) can continuously monitor and simulate various cyber attack methods, helping you validate the effectiveness of your security defense system 24/7. Meanwhile, it empowers security teams to proactively defend, relieving the pressure of unknown risks and talent shortages, allowing enterprises to respond properly when threats arrive.

Reference Source:

https://www.esentire.com/resources/library/2022-official-cybercrime-report