How often does cybercrime happen in 2024? To answer this question, it’s important to know that cybercrime isn’t just one illicit act.
There are lots of methods of committing cyber crimes.
Hacking, ransomware, identity theft, denial of service attacks (DoS), phishing, malware, web jacking, cyberstalking are all included under the umbrella of cybercrime.
These illicit online attacks can happen to businesses, individuals, and governments, and often involve the theft of information and intellectual property.
Now that you have an idea of the wide scope of cybercrime, we will start by answering “how often does cybercrime happen?” by addressing the total of all kinds of cybercrimes, plus going through the most common types of cyberattacks.
How Often Does Cybercrime Happen in 2024?
According to Norton, the antivirus and Internet security company, there are over 2,200 cyberattacks per day.
The A. James Clark School of Engineering conducted a study on this issue. This study revealed that 2,244 cyber crimes were committed per day in 2021.
The 2,244 figure represents that a cybercrime occurs every 39 seconds.
According to cybercrime statistics, phishing is at the top of the list in cyber crimes.
Phishing is followed by ransomware (cyber extortion), data breach, identity theft, cyber harassment.
We will discuss the elements of these top five cyber crimes in the next few sections to familiarize you with what’s happening, and to whom.
How Often Does Phishing Happen in 2024?
How often does cybercrime happen regarding phishing emails? Data from Symantec Enterprise in 2020 revealed that 1 out of every 4,200 emails were phishing emails.
Also, regarding targeted phishing attacks, 65% of currently active groups used spear phishing (targeted phishing emails) as their main infection course.
Most phishing attacks (96%) are delivered via email. Another 3% are delivered through malicious sites, and the other 1% arrive through telephone calls.
Phishing phone calls are called vishing, and text messages are called smishing.
Essentially, this means that our email lines of communication are loaded with cybercrime.
Emails and text messages usually include a link to a malicious website created solely to steal your information.
Next, we will address cyber extortion, often called ransomware.
How Often Does Cyber Extortion Happen in 2024?
How often does cybercrime happen involving cyber extortion? Cyber extortion is a cybercrime where a person or a group holds a business’ electronic files and demands a ransom to return them.
Another term for this is ransomware, but not all cyber extortion is ransomware.
Ransomware is the most commonly used method of cyber extortion where the hacker locks the files so the business cannot access them until they pay for access.
Ransomware is a tactic used to fool an employee into clicking on a file attachment or link in an email.
When the employee interacts with the link or attachment, it activates the ransomware.
From there, the ransomware spreads through the whole network as it encrypts servers and data that prevents them from accessing files and applications.
To gain access, you must pay the ransom to get the encryption key.
Another cyber extortion term is distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), which impacts the whole network of a business.
Hackers use a network of infected computers to send out a constant and consistent flow of messages to a web server, rendering it out of service until the messages stop.
These cyber crimes can ruin businesses.
In 2019, it was estimated by Cybersecurity Ventures that ransomware attacks would occur every 11 seconds by 2021.
According to Security Magazine online, this type of cyber extortion was hiked by 92.7%, which is double compared to 2020.
How Often Do Data Breaches Happen in 2024?
How often does cybercrime related to data breaches happen? According to cybercrime statistics from Statista, in 2020, approximately 1,000 data breaches occurred in the United States alone.
That figure was expected to rise in 2021 and continue to do so in 2022 and beyond.
Since we discussed ransomware, you should know that 10% of all data breaches committed in 2021 involved ransomware, according to the Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report.
DataProt revealed that in 2019, there were over 20 data breach instances reported every day in the first six months of that year.
We have no doubt this figure has increased, but thus far, no new figures are available.
How Often Does Identity Theft Happen in 2024?
Unfortunately, identity theft is a term that we know all too well.
Way too many people have had their identities stolen, which has left them with a credit score mess for many years due to no fault of their own.
So, how often does cybercrime regarding identity theft happen?
Experian, a credit reporting bureau, revealed that 1 in 120 Americans fall victim to identity theft every year, according to data from 2020.
Identity theft is defined as “the fraudulent acquisition and use of a person’s private identifying information, usually for financial gain”, according to Dictionary definitions from Oxford Languages online.
How Often Does Cyber Harassment Happen in 2024?
Cyber harassment is also called cyberbullying or cyberstalking, depending on the perpetrators intention.
It relates to actions like sending threatening messages, obscene images, and other repeated unwanted messages and communications through email, messaging, text messaging, or any other way people communicate from their devices.
It’s hard to pinpoint a single number for this, or any cybercrime like it, but we will attempt to put this into perspective for you.
According to Do Something online, 95% of teenagers in America have access to the Internet on mobile devices, which makes it the most common method for cyber harassment, including cyberbullying.
It’s estimated that around 37% of young people between 12 and 17 years old have experienced cyberbullying. Another 30% claim it happened more than once.
Girls are more apt to not only be the targets of cyber harassment (cyberbullying or cyberstalking) than boys, but also more likely to be the perpetrators of this cybercrime.
Also, 60% of those who have witnessed cyberbullying don’t do anything about it, probably out of fear.
Only 1 in 10 teenagers victimized by cyberbullying will tell their parents or anyone they trust about it.
Adults are also victimized by cyber harassment and cyberbullying.
Around 4 in 10 American adults have experienced some form of harassment online. That represents 40% of the population.
No matter who it is, these figures are staggering and concerning.
Conclusion
How often does cybercrime happen in 2024? We would imagine that the figures and facts about the array of cyber crimes have been enlightening, if not at least somewhat frightening.
This information isn’t intended to frighten anyone, but to inform you, so that you can find ways to protect yourself, your family, and your business from cybercrimes.
How often does cybercrime happen where people are traumatized and impacted for their lifetime?
We can only imagine that figure is beyond comprehension.
These figures tell us how bad the problem is today, but how long has it been happening?
Have you ever fallen victim to any cybercrime? If so, what did you do about it?
