Bharat Bhise HNA is a cybersecurity expert who I met during a tech conference in Toronto last year, and who has since become a very god friend of mine. Cybercrime is something that we all know exists but it isn’t until you speak to an expert like Bharat the true horrors of what can happen when there is a cyberattack come to light. What Bharat told me that evening and in our conversations since is incredibly worrying and it is clear that cybercrime is something which has risen a great deal in recent years. So what is it about this particular form of crime that is so attractive to so many? Let’s take a look.
Connected
The world is more connected than ever before and most of our lives run off these connections over the internet. Our phones are in sync with our laptops, our bank accounts, personal information and credit cards are all operated electrically and we store information about our lives on cloud platforms and servers. With so much information out there, it was only natural that criminals would soon understand how they could access it and what they could do with that information.
No Effort
Cybercriminals have the ability to cause mass disruption and large scale robberies without even leaving the comfort of their own bed. This isn’t like other crimes where the criminal needs to be involved physically, hackers and other criminals hide behind the greatest mask of all and they can cause mayhem from a computer screen. This of course makes it a very attractive prospect to those with the abilities of a cybercriminal.
Reactions
Much of the reason why cybercrime is increasing is because people are not taking measures to stop it. To give you an example of this, think of CCTV cameras, think of just how much they affected criminal’s lives once they were introduced, massively reducing crime and acting as one of the best deterrents to theft. The equivalent in the cybercrime world is to install software which protects you computer systems and your network, yet hardly anybody does this. This is why cybercriminals find life so easy, there are so many places which they can attack and obtain information, without having to even work hard. Until businesses and private citizens begin to wake up to the very real threats of cyberattacks, they are not going to slow down any time soon.
Value of Information
The value of information is another reason why these attacks have increased, and in the main the hackers themselves are not the biggest criminals behind this, but rather those who buy the information which has been obtained. In many cases we see hackers-for-hire, who have no idea what they are stealing, they just know that if they get it, they can make some real money for doing so.
We have to learn more about cybercrime and pay more attention to the experts like Bharat if we are going to slow down the number of attacks taking place.