Organized Cyber Crime

Organized crime is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals, who intend to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for money and profit.

Technology has allowed users worldwide an ease of access from online banking to instantaneous communication via email or phone. Criminals have also benefited from those same technological innovations, giving them a greater access to victims and targets, worldwide communication, and minimizing attribution. Cybercrime is an area that has flourished, as it requires little resources, no traveling, and a skill set that is readily available to learn. This has made cybercrime a serious threat to both national and international security. In 2014, McAfee estimated that the cost of global cybercrime is 0.8% of global GDP that’s over $400 billion USD in losses to cybercrime. Furthermore, unlike in traditional criminal activity, organized cyber-criminal groups prefer to remain unknown, which makes tracking cybercrime activity incredibly difficult.

Dozens of cybercrime groups have reached the level of sophistication where their technical capabilities are on a par with those of a nation-state, it has been claimed. Gangs are capable of building complex systems aimed at stealing money and intellectual property on a grand scale, costing almost the same to the global economy as counterfeiting or the narcotics trade.

For example, an organized crime group might spread malware which steals bank account details from an infected PC. That same malicious software would also use affected machines to carry out a denial of service attack against the bank in order to distract the bank's security team while the gang cleans out bank accounts using the stolen account credentials.

Cybercrime can be expected to grow, as is allows criminals to remain relatively anonymous, requires little to no transportation, has a high rate of return, and unlike other criminal activity, like drug trafficking, cybercrime has no enforceable international norms or laws to prosecute criminals. Add to this more businesses and individuals moving to information to online service platforms, and developing countries looking to grow their technology sector, giving an influx of users and victims for cybercrime. Cybercrime has serious implications on national, personal, and economic security.