Cybercrime Increases 55 Percent Leading to Over $4.1 Billion in Losses

According to data released by StockApps, the annual loss from cybercrime in the U.S. reached over $4.1 billion in 2020. This translates into a 55 percent increase over the last two years.

To give a further breakdown on the types of cybercrime and losses involved, $1.8 billion (42 percent) of the loss came from business email compromise, a common type of CEO fraud. Other popular methods included phishing attacks and extortion.

Last year’s SolarWinds hack breached thousands of organizations in industries ranging from hospitality to government agencies. This hack significantly contributed to the overall loss, along with other notable attacks on platforms such as Twitter and Zoom.

According to a recent poll by Gallup, 82 percent of Americans are viewing cyberterrorism as the top threat facing the country. While we continue to work in a remote environment during the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercriminals are becoming more aggressive in their social engineering tactics. 

You may be asking yourself – how do we stop cybercrime in our organization completely? With added layers of security, this will help alleviate most of the potentially malicious activity, but the only way to truly protect your organization is user education. Security Awareness Training can help your users identify and report any suspicious activity.

Information used in this article was provided by our partners at KnowBe4.