The short answer to "how serious is the cybercrime problem in America?" is: Way more serious than our government seems to realize. That is one of the conclusions that can be drawn from recent ESET research into public attitudes to cybercrime, cybersecurity, and data privacy.
To check out the details, please visit this article I wrote at WeLiveSecurity, which is where you can download the full report. It has some pretty solid that may help us persuade policy makers to move cybercrime deterrence up the public policy agenda and make it the #1 priority that it should already be.
Frankly, as a student of criminology I was shocked to see that respondents thought cybercrime was a more important challenge than drug trafficking or money laundering. Almost equally worrying was the finding that less than half of Americans surveyed think that the authorities, including law enforcement, are doing enough to fight cybercrime.
So here is the conclusion that I wrote for the sruvey report: unless cybersecurity initiatives and cybercrime deterrence are made a top priority of government
agencies and corporations, the rate at which systems and data are abused will continue to rise, further
undermining the public’s trust in technology, trust that is vital to America’s economic well-being, now
and in the future.
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