Cybercrimes Will Cause $6 Trillion Worth of Damage by 2021

A newly released report backed by security consulting firm Herjavec Group estimates cybercrime will account for $6 trillion of annual damages by 2021. To put it into perspective, cybercrime has cost governments, businesses and citizens $3 trillion in the past year. The report defines damages as “any incident where hackers caused the destruction or theft of money, intellectual property, personal or financial data. Additional monetary losses experienced due to lost employee productivity embezzlement, fraud, forensic investigations or other restoration efforts,” are also included in the total. As the number of first-time internet users increases significantly and the Internet of things (IoT) grows exponentially, the world will have to protect 50 times more data by 2020 than it does today, according to the repot.