The Negative Impacts of Cybercrime on Business and Society - Research Paper Example

Computer crime (commonly referred to as cybercrime) is a reference to any type of criminal activity that involves the use of a computer or an internal/external network. This type of activity has been increasing at alarming rates over the past few decades, to the point that seemingly no one is immune from becoming a victim. Cybercrime can take on many shapes and forms. It can begin as something seemingly harmless, and rise to one of the gravest threats to personal and national security that exists today.

It is also a troubling trend that the majority of the perpetrators of such crimes appear be young people under the age of 26. They often justify their actions initially as harmless hacking just for fun, but they quickly realize that their actions could prove to be quite lucrative. The harm done to victims of cybercrime, however, are immense. It is important to note that cybercrime does not only involve a financial element. There are crimes being committed that involve spam, harassment, threats, child pornography, and child endangerment just to name a few.

Moreover, Cyber threats are becoming a dominant and challenging factor for organizations, as it leverages many risks that are constantly changing as cyber-crime spread by a number of peoples acting independently and having their own varied self-interest (Hardin, 1968), every now and then, there are new security breaches resulting in stolen credit card records, stolen personal information and losses in terms of customer confidence, as well as revenue. NO matter how advanced the security controls are, still incidents and security breaches are on the rise.

Relevance and Significance The security of networks and computers globally has been called into question in recent years. Globalization has increased the presence the cyber criminals, compounding efforts to truly secure and maintain reliable networks that can be trusted. Even the most secure of networks, be them owned and operated by government or private individuals, have been hacked into from time to time, leading one to wonder if true security is even possible (Kirschner, Buckingham, & Carr, 2002).

These problems become relevant because the job of maintaining network security has fallen on individual companies, reducing their ability to expand as rapidly and profitably as possible. This is the result of the reality that the insecurity of their networks has become a primary concern (Layton, 2007). Rather than devoting more resources to research and development, for example, many agencies are need to reallocate resources for combating the increasing prevalence of cybercrime. Current research alludes that, in the face of growing concerns with cybercrime, and with the lack of true network society, individuals are becoming more and more hesitant to use networks to conduct commerce and financial transactions (Peltier, 2001).

While it is true that Internet usage is up, trust in conducting electronic transactions is going down. Should this continue, the rapid globalization that we have experienced to this point will likely be compromised (Hung, Chang, & Yu, 2006). To further examine the relevance of this problem, it is helpful to briefly touch on the various types of