Cybercrime: It’s Worse Than We Thought

Illustration shows shady-looking character in sunglasses (hacker) overlaid with computer text and numbers.

By Douglas S. Thomas, an economist in the Applied Economics Office at NIST

The cyber world is relatively new, and unlike other types of assets, cyber assets are potentially accessible to criminals in far-off locations. This distance provides the criminal with significant protections from getting caught; thus, the risks are low, and with cyber assets and activities being in the trillions of dollars, the payoff is high.

When we talk about cybercrime, we often focus on the loss of privacy and security. But cybercrime also results in significant economic losses. Yet the data and research on this aspect of cybercrime are unfortunately limited. Data collection often relies on small sample sizes or has other challenges that bring accuracy into question.