MOSCOW, August 2. / TASS /. The annual damage from cyber crimes is likely to soar to $6 trln in 2021, according to Special Representative of the Russian President for International Cooperation in the Field of Information Security, Director of the Department of International Information Security of the Foreign Ministry Andrey Krutskikh and the Department’s third secretary Airat Khamidullin.
In recent years, the damage from cyber crimes has increased significantly, and its scale is striking, the International Affairs journal stated on Monday. "In 2018, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted that the annual losses from cyber crime stood at $1.5 trln, while in 2021, the figure could reach $6 trln."
Furthermore, many companies avoid reporting such incidents, therefore the real figure is likely to be significantly higher. At the same time, the peculiarity of cyber crimes consists in the fact that they are committed remotely, often from other countries and no state in the world is capable of fighting them alone, the article reads.
The Russian diplomats also emphasized the role of the pandemic in stimulating the number of cyber crimes. "The COVID-19 pandemic forced humanity to ‘dive’ into the virtual space, transforming economic and everyday life to a digital format. Criminals, dynamically adapting to modern conditions, started to use information and communication technologies for their own purposes. Phishing, ransomware, DDoS attacks and cyber-attacks are a permanent fixture in news reports and have become an integral part of our lives," the authors went on to say. "The pandemic has given them a new impetus and exposed long-delayed problems."
According to Russia’s diplomats, such issues are largely brought about by "the imperfection of the country’s national legislation as well as the current system of international cooperation" in this field. "The existing multilateral instruments were developed 10-20 years ago and do not keep up with the cybercriminals’ activities. Bilateral interaction channels between the countries’ law enforcement agencies are far from ideal," the authors stressed. "This is especially visible when crimes are committed in a matter of minutes, while the response to a request for obtaining digital evidence can take from a couple of weeks to two to three years.
"In an era of rampant digitalization, the results of cyber attacks can be extremely destructive and lead to disasters affecting national security issues. Meanwhile, the main focus of cybercriminals’ activities is still financial gain," Krutskikh and Khamidullin noted.