World cybercrime index published: countries ranked as per cybercrime
Recently an international team of researchers released the world’s first World Cybercrime Index. It is a result of the team spending three years researching some of the cybercrime hotspots across the globe.
The World Cybercrime Index was developed through a partnership between the University of Oxford and UNSW Canberra and funded by the European Union-supported project CRIMGOV Project and the European Research Council.
Let us explore what the research means and its importance for cybersecurity experts around the world.
What is the research about?
Since cybercriminals always mask their identities and use highly complex protection systems, it becomes challenging for experts to determine information about the cybercriminals, like telling where they are based.
More than 92 leading cybercrime experts were part of the survey from around the world with specialization in cybercrime intelligence gathering and investigation.
The research intends to address that challenge by offering insights into cybercrime geographically. It shows how a small number of countries have the highest number of cybercriminals. It shows the severity and scale of cybercrime across different countries.
How will the research help?
The research will help public and private organizations identify geographical spots with the highest cyber threats.
It will help agencies tracking cybercriminals to know where to direct their efforts with accurate information on cybercriminals. It will allow public and private companies to plan their expenditure accordingly.
For example, they can plan which geography needs more focus on cybersecurity resources, and expenditure on cybersecurity and which geography doesn’t need much expenditure or emphasis based on the risks they are exposed to.
The research will pave the way for continuous data collection with a focus on the emergence of new hotspots as per the cybercrime activity over time.
With this information, agencies can proactively intervene before any major cyber attack.
How is the World Cybercrime Index (WCI) derived?
The participants of the survey were asked to consider five major types of cybercrime
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WCI, or World Cybercrime Index, is derived based on two metrics – one is the type of cyber criminality score for five crime types, and the other is the overall score across all cybercrime types.
The countries topping the World Cybercrime Index
What are the key takeaways from the world cybercrime index?
The following are some of the key takeaways from the research report:
The research indicates that a few countries have the highest number of cybercriminals, with Russia, Ukraine, and China having the highest WCI scores. These are the geographical cybercrime hotspots that have the highest number of cybercrimes, making them the largest global producers of cybercrimes
The research considers the five most prevalent cybercrime types namely: cybercrimes related to technical products and services, attacks and extortion-based attacks, data identity theft-based cybercrimes, scams and cashing out, and money laundering-related cybercrime.
It will give a comprehensive idea of the type of cybercrime that is more frequent in a particular geography. Geographical information about cyber criminals will make it easier for agencies to track and find them.
The research proves cybercrimes involve a good amount of organization. It shows that many aspects of cybercrimes are pre-planned acts of crime carried out by groups of individuals.
It was found that cybercriminals often deploy proxy services to hide their IP addresses for carrying out attacks across boundaries, collaborating with partners with infrastructure based in different countries.
To sum it up
The world’s first world cyber-crime index has been published after three years of research, by a group of international researchers. It will assist both private and public organizations to become aware of the geographical concentration of cybercrime groups and cyber-attacks. The research will help agencies in proactively tracking and intervening and assist organizations in planning their cybersecurity countermeasures and related expenditures.