The FBI’s 2019 Internet Crime Report, came out February 25. Email account hijacking, or Business Email Compromise (BEC) is the top money maker for cyber-criminal groups, earning them an estimated $1.776 BILLION with a B. CEOs of companies are top targets for this exploit, and usually it begins with a phishing email.
Even though ransomware is the big noisy topic, in terms of dollar losses, it is not even in the top ten, although a lot of expenses and costs are not included in the total, only the reported ransom payment amounts, or what the attackers earned. Ransomware losses from IT labor and third party remediation expenses are not included. Other cyber-crimes are shown in the following table.
Another sobering statistic is that people over the age of 60 lead the way in dollars lost to cyber-criminals. They lost almost twice as much money as any other age group.
For more details about the cyber-crime landscape, I recommend you check out the FBI’s 2019 Internet Crime Report for yourself.
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About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com