Pierluigi Paganini September 06, 2012

Here we are with the regular appointment with Symantec and its report on cybercrime ” The yearly Norton Cybercrime report“, a document that analyzes the evolution of  cyber criminal activities and their impact on the society. The report covers different technologies including and social networking and mobile reporting the impact on final customers in economic terms.

The report involved 13018 participants across 24 countries aged 18-64 and a pool of expert collaborators.

The impact of cybercrime is worrying with 556 million of victims per year, 2 on 3 adults have been victims of on line illegals in their lifetime, the total economic loss is 110 Billion with an average cost per victim of $197.

The Asian region is the most affected by cybercrime, the global pricetag of consumer cybercrime for China amounts to 46 Billion , followed by US with 21 Billion and European Area with 16 Billion.

The highest numbers of cybercrime victims were found in Russia (92 percent), China (84 percent) and South Africa (80 percent).

The technologies that have suffered the major increase in cybercrime are social networking and mobile.

It has been registered an increase in cybercrime which takes advantage of social networks and mobile technology. Mobile users are very vulnerable to attacks, 2/2 adults use a mobile device to access the internet and the mobile vulnerabilities doubled in 2011 respect previous year.

44% of users aren’t aware of the existance of solutions for mobile envitonments, and 35 of adults have lost their mobile device or had it stolen.

Of particular concern is an improper use of social networks, wrong management of sessions, absence of validation of visited links and a total ignorance of any security setting expose users to fraudulent activities.

15 percent of users have had their account infiltrated, and 1 in 10 have been victims of fake links or scams.

Other behavior extremely worrying is the way in which people use public networks and operate on it, for example accessing to private services such as email.

The email account are one of the most appetible targets for cybercriminals because they represent a simple way to access to sensible information.

“When using public connections, 67 percent access email, 63 percent use social networking and 24 percent access their bank account, according to the report.”

I found really interesting the reading of the report of security firms that could give us a vision on the evolution of cyber threats and of course some practices to share for those users too “distracted” or un aware of the incoming risks.
The report confirms that cybercrime industry is an factory that has no crisis and that moves amounts of money comparable to the economical revenue of a State.
What is worrying is the increasing trend that demonstrate the need to put in place further countermeasures and of course a massive awareness campaign.

Pierluigi Paganini