By Rachel Clark, SKADI Cyber Defense
According to the World Meteorological Organization, between 2010 and 2019, worldwide losses due to climate change were a staggering $1.5 Trillion. Estimates are now that this number has exceeded $3 Trillion, and it is due to factors such as wildfires, drought, and flood. These losses are now larger than Canada’s Gross Domestic Product.
As important as it is to address the Climate Crisis, there is a much larger and existential threat to our economy which is being largely overlooked. That threat is cyber crime. The World Economic Forum states that by next year, worldwide cyber crime will amount to $10.2 Trillion in losses, and this number is larger than the GDP of every country in the world save the United States and China.
If you are paying attention, you will notice that cyber crime is causing disruption and financial harm to small, medium sized, and large organizations in Canada every day now. Additionally, Canadian metropolitan municipalities have been impacted, such as in Toronto and Hamilton. Our hospitals have been taken offline for days at a time. Your information, stolen from data breaches, is being sold by criminals on marketplaces in the deep, dark web, that they then use to target you to defraud you out of your hard-earned money and destroy any illusion of privacy you once had.
In addition to the heartbreaking losses experienced by everyday people and organizations, we also must be cognizant of what the money illegally obtained by cyber criminals is funding. Russian President Vladimir Putin is certainly using the proceeds of cybercrime to thwart sanctions and fund his war in Ukraine. In South East Asia, human beings are being trafficked by cyber criminals who are forcing them to work in call centers against their will for the purpose of committing cyber crimes against you. Cyber crime is a primary funding source which fuels the international drug trade, pouring fentanyl across our borders.
Cybercrime is also having a devastating effect on our ability to hold free and fair elections, and tearing the very fabric of our societies apart by manipulating us on social media with the lens to make us believe our neighbour is our enemy and not our friend. And most of all, to make us think that being the victims of all these things are our fault. They’re not.
Cyber criminals are masterful at committing cyber crime. They are unceasing, working day and night to develop and deploy new ways to target governments, corporations, and people. They have unlimited capital and resources to utilize the execution of criminal activity. Furthermore, since cybercrime is enabled by some governments who are loathe to prosecute cyber criminals, or in some cases even benefiting from cyber crime themselves, cyber criminals can do their illegal acts nearly unimpeded in many areas of the world.
Canadians have rules for an ordered society we must follow. Committing cyber crime, even against the very threat actors who defrauded us is still illegal (as it should be). Police departments around the world are extremely understaffed and unequipped to deal with cyber crime. The Canadian Government has only just begun to make significant policy changes to address it. As such, if you are the victim of cybercrime, there is frequently no recourse for you, even if the losses are substantial.
Changing this narrative will first require that we acknowledge the issue as a crisis. Then, we can start to implement change. Change looks like significant governmental investments into cyber protection, educating everyone from the ground up, and collaborating to share data on protection.
Finally, the recognition that the size of your business does not provide inherent immunity to cyber threats. Many small and medium-sized businesses are being victimized and, in some cases, re-victimized. Sadly, in some cases losing their business entirely. It can be mitigated, but only if we label it and understand its potential impact, and strongly address it..
SKADI Cyber Defense is a corporation that provides fully monitored and end-to-end cybersecurity solutions to protect corporations from data leakage, cybersecurity threats including ransomware, and provide confidential, holistic intelligence reporting from various sources regarding potential threat actors. We will enable full defense in depth through the deployment of innovative software solutions at an accessible price point for small and medium sized business and NGOs. Find more information HERE.
Paid for by the featured advertiser
Don’t miss out on Doppler!
Sign up here to receive our email digest with links to our most recent stories.
Local news in your inbox three times per week!
Click here to support local news
Join the discussion: