Aug. 21 (UPI) — Cybercrime costs the global economy more than $1 million in a single minute, a new report shows.
RiskIQ, a cyber security company based in San Francisco, said Tuesday that hackers cost the global economy about $1.14 million every minute, and 1,861 people fall victim in that time, based on its analysis, which it compiled in an information graphic called “The Evil Internet Minute.”
At this pace, hackers cost the global economy $600 billion last year alone, RiskIQ said.
“As the internet and its community continue to grow at a rapid pace, the threat landscape targeting it grows at scale as well,” RiskIQ CEO Elias Manousos said. “We made the vast numbers associated with it more accessible by framing them in the context of an ‘internet minute.’ Leveraging the latest research as well as our own global threat intelligence, we’re defining the sheer scale of attacks that take place across the internet to help businesses better understand what they’re up against on the open web.”
The hackers successfully attack sites despite businesses spending of up to $171,233 a minute to curb the damage, RiskIQ said. Tactics range from malware to phishing to supply chain attacks targeted at third parties. Hackers’ motives ranged from monetary gain to politics to espionage.
“As companies innovate online to make more meaningful touchpoints with their customers, partners, and employees, attackers prey on their lack of visibility into their internet-facing attack surface to erode users’ trust and access credentials and sensitive data,” Manousos said. “Businesses must realize that they are vulnerable beyond the firewall, all the way across the open internet.”
The data breaches that RiskIQ found were also staggering. Some 2.9 billion records were leaked per day in publicly disclosed breaches, which equals 5,518 records per minute.
