Cybercrime, Cybersecurity and the Future of the Internet

In the past decade, advances in communications technologies and the “informatization” of society have converged as never before in human history. This has given rise to the industrialization of a type of crime where the commodity—personal information—moves far too quickly for conventional law enforcement methods to keep pace.

The unprecedented scale of the problem threatens the ability of the authorities to respond—with more than 150,000 viruses and other types of malicious code in global circulation and 148,000 computers compromised per day. At the same time, the authorities have more data on criminal activity at their disposal than ever before and now have an opportunity to harness this information in ways that make intelligence development and investigation more streamlined and cost-effective.

But cybercrime rates continue to increase in line with internet adoption: mobile internet access and the continuing deployment of broadband internet infrastructure throughout the world introduces new levels of vulnerability, with potential victims online for longer periods of time and capable of transmitting much more data than before. The adoption of these internet technologies in developing countries poses a potential external threat to the EU and other developed regions; and the increasing trend for outsourcing data management to third parties presents imminent risks to
information security and data protection.

In the US but increasingly in Europe too, governments are establishing institutions to deal with critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and programs to engage both business and individual users on the issue of cybercrime and cybersecurity. This strategy is in its infancy but attracting ever greater attention and funding.

At the same time, the organic development of internet technology has resulted in the existence of myriad actors in the information security field. By way of illustration, the ENISA directory of network and information security stakeholders in the EU alone already stretches to over 400 pages.

What should be the roles of the private sector, information security organizations, financial institutions and the public authorities in tackling cybercrime? How can global cooperation of government policies and law enforcement actions on cybercrime and internet security be initiated and pushed forward? And how can the growing numbers of internet users be made more aware of the threats to their cybersecurity?