According to Atlas VPN, it would seem by 2025, the impact of cybercrime really will have excelled itself, with damages predicted to reach more than $27 billion.
In 2019, authorities received a record-breaking 467,361 Internet-facilitated fraud complaints, with accumulated losses exceeding $3.5 billion. Yet, in 2020, lockdowns might act as a catalyst for the biggest hacker attack outbreak to date.
Atlas VPN projects that in 2020, there will be a 45% increase in cybercrime damages in comparison to 2019. This means that in 2020, the estimated monetary losses will reach over $5 billion.
Rachel Welsh, COO of Atlas VPN, shares her thoughts on the future of cybercrime:
“Due to the pandemic, people are stuck at home, surfing the web, and working remotely. We can expect a record number of hacker attacks in 2020 since the pool for potential cybercrime victims has never been larger. Also, the latest cybercrime trends show that hackers are focusing on human layer errors more than ever.”
Cybercrime damages from 2014 to 2019
In 2014, hackers stole over $800 million from unsuspecting victims; by 2019, the number reached $3.5 billion. The monetary damages caused by cybercrime increased over four times in the last six years.
In 2019, digital crimes that caused most financial damages were business email compromise (BEC), romance fraud, and spoofing. Out of these, BEC accounts for over half of the losses in 2019, with a staggering $1.77 billion.
