{"id":191669,"date":"2026-02-21T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/21\/cybercrime-to-cost-the-world-10-5-trillion-annually-by-2025\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T16:55:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T21:55:25","slug":"cybercrime-to-cost-the-world-10-5-trillion-annually-by-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/21\/cybercrime-to-cost-the-world-10-5-trillion-annually-by-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Cybercrime To Cost The World $10.5 Trillion Annually By 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cybercrime To Cost The World $10.5 Trillion Annually By 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/cybersecurityventures.com\/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-21 03:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: cybersecurityventures.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t21 Feb Cybercrime To Cost The World $10.5 Trillion Annually By 2025<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tSpecial Report: Cyberwarfare In The C-Suite.\u00a0
\n\u2013\u00a0Steve Morgan, Editor-in-Chief
\nSausalito, Calif. \u2013 Nov. 13, 2020
\nIf it were measured as a country, then cybercrime \u2014 which is predicted to inflict damages totaling $6 trillion USD globally in 2021 \u2014 would be the world\u2019s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China.
\nCybersecurity Ventures expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion USD in 2015. This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the damage inflicted from natural disasters in a year, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.
\nThe damage cost estimation is based on historical cybercrime figures including recent year-over-year growth, a dramatic increase in hostile nation-state sponsored and organized crime gang hacking activities, and a cyberattack surface which will be an order of magnitude greater in 2025 than it is today.
\nCybercrime costs include damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement, fraud, post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, and reputational harm.<\/p>\n

CYBERCRIME HITS HOME
\nThe United States, the world\u2019s largest economy with a nominal GDP of nearly $21.5 trillion, constitutes one-fourth of the world economy, according to data from Nasdaq.
\nCybercrime has hit the U.S. so hard that in 2018 a supervisory special agent with the FBI who investigates cyber intrusions told The Wall Street Journal that every American citizen should expect that all of their data (personally identifiable information) has been stolen and is on the dark web \u2014 a part of the deep web \u2014 which is intentionally hidden and used to conceal and promote heinous activities. Some estimates put the size of the deep web (which is not indexed or accessible by search engines) at as much as 5,000 times larger than the surface web, and growing at a rate that defies quantification.
\nThe dark web is also where cybercriminals buy and sell malware, exploit kits, and cyberattack services, which they use to strike victims \u2014 including businesses, governments, utilities, and essential service providers on U.S. soil.
\nA cyberattack could potentially disable the economy of a city, state or our entire country.
\nIn his 2016 New York Times bestseller \u2014 Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath \u2014 Ted Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on America\u2019s power grid is not only possible but likely, that it would be devastating, and that the U.S. is shockingly unprepared.
\nBillionaire businessman and philanthropist Warren Buffet calls cybercrime the number one problem with mankind, and cyberattacks a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear weapons.
\nA bullseye is squarely on our nation\u2019s businesses.
\nOrganized cybercrime entities are joining forces, and their likelihood of detection and prosecution is estimated to be as low as 0.05 percent in the U.S., according to the World Economic Forum\u2019s 2020 Global Risk Report.
\nRANSOMWARE
\nRansomware \u2014 a malware that infects computers (and mobile devices) and restricts their access to files, often threatening permanent data destruction unless a ransom is paid \u2014 has reached epidemic proportions globally and is the \u201cgo-to method of attack\u201d for cybercriminals.
\nA 2017 report from Cybersecurity Ventures predicted ransomware damages would cost the world $5 billion in 2017, up from $325 million in 2015 \u2014 a 15X increase in just two years. The damages for 2018 were estimated at $8 billion, and for 2019 the figure rose to $11.5 billion.
\nThe latest forecast is for global ransomware damage costs to reach $20 billion by 2021 \u2014 which is 57X more than it was in 2015.
\nWe predict there will be a ransomware attack on businesses every 11 seconds by 2021, up from every 40 seconds in 2016.
\nThe FBI is particularly concerned with ransomware hitting healthcare providers, hospitals, 911 and first responders. These types of cyberattacks can impact the physical safety of American citizens, and this is the forefront of what Herb Stapleton, FBI cyber division section chief, and his team are focused on.
\nLast month, ransomware claimed its first life. German authorities reported a ransomware attack caused the failure of IT systems at a major hospital in Duesseldorf, and a woman who needed urgent admission died after she had to be taken to another city for treatment.
\nRansomware, now the fastest growing and one of the most damaging types of cybercrime, will ultimately convince senior executives to take the cyber threat more seriously, according to Mark Montgomery, executive director at the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) \u2014 but he hopes it doesn\u2019t come to that.
\nCYBER ATTACK SURFACE
\nThe modern definition of the word \u201chack\u201d was coined at MIT in April 1955. The first known mention of computer (phone) hacking occurred in a 1963 issue of The Tech. Over the past fifty-plus years, the world\u2019s attack surface has evolved from phone systems to a vast datasphere outpacing humanity\u2019s ability to secure it.
\nIn 2013, IBM proclaimed data promises to be for the 21st century what steam power was for the 18th, electricity for the 19th and hydrocarbons for the 20th.
\n\u201cWe believe that data is the phenomenon of our time,\u201d said Ginni Rometty, IBM Corp.\u2019s executive chairman, in 2015, addressing CEOs, CIOs and CISOs from 123 companies in 24 industries at a conference in New York City. \u201cIt is the world\u2019s new natural resource. It is the new basis of competitive advantage, and it is transforming every profession and industry. If all of this is true \u2014 even inevitable \u2014 then cyber crime, by definition, is the greatest threat to every profession, every industry, every company in the world.\u201d
\nThe world will store 200 zettabytes of data by 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. This includes data stored on private and public IT infrastructures, on utility infrastructures, on private and public cloud data centers, on personal computing devices \u2014 PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones \u2014 and on IoT (Internet-of-Things) devices.
\nAs a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly half the U.S. labor force is working from home, according to Stanford University. As employees generate, access, and share more data remotely through cloud apps, the number of security blind spots balloons.
\nIt\u2019s predicted that the total amount of data stored in the cloud \u2014 which includes public clouds operated by vendors and social media companies (think Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc.), government-owned clouds that are accessible to citizens and businesses, private clouds owned by mid-to-large-sized corporations, and cloud storage providers \u2014 will reach 100 zettabytes by 2025, or 50 percent of the world\u2019s data at that time, up from approximately 25 percent stored in the cloud in 2015.
\nRoughly one million more people join the internet every day. We expect there will be 6 billion people connected to the internet interacting with data in 2022, up from 5 billion in 2020 \u2014 and more than 7.5 billion internet users in 2030.
\nCyber threats have expanded from targeting and harming computers, networks, and smartphones \u2014 to people, cars, railways, planes, power grids and anything with a heartbeat or an electronic pulse. Many of these Things are connected to corporate networks in some fashion, further complicating cybersecurity.
\nBy 2023, there will be 3X more networked devices on Earth than humans, according to a report from Cisco. And by 2022, 1 trillion networked sensors will be embedded in the world around us, with up to 45 trillion in 20 years.
\nIP traffic has reached an annual run rate of 2.3 zettabytes in 2020, up from an annual run rate of 870.3 exabytes in 2015.
\nData is the building block of the digitized economy, and the opportunities for innovation and malice around it are incalculable.<\/p>\n

CYBERSECURITY SPENDING
\nIn 2004, the global cybersecurity market was worth $3.5 billion \u2014 and in 2017 it was worth more than $120 billion. The cybersecurity market grew by roughly 35X during that 13-year period \u2014 prior to the latest market sizing by Cybersecurity Ventures.
\nGlobal spending on cybersecurity products and services for defending against cybercrime is projected to exceed $1 trillion cumulatively over the five-year period from 2017 to 2021.
\n\u201cMost cybersecurity budgets at U.S. organizations are increasing linearly or flat, but the cyberattacks are growing exponentially,\u201d says CSC\u2019s Montgomery. This simple observation should be a wake-up call for C-suite executives.
\nHealthcare has lagged behind other industries and the tantalizing target on its back is attributable to outdated IT systems, fewer cybersecurity protocols and IT staff, extremely valuable data, and the pressing need for medical practices and hospitals to pay ransoms quickly to regain data. The healthcare industry will respond by spending $125 billion cumulatively from 2020 to 2025 to beef up its cyber defenses.
\nThe FY 2020 U.S. President\u2019s Budget includes $17.4 billion of budget authority for cybersecurity-related activities, a $790 million (5 percent) increase above the FY 2019 estimate, according to The White House. Due to the sensitive nature of some activities, this amount does not represent the entire cyber budget.
\nCybersecurity Ventures anticipates 12-15 percent year-over-year cybersecurity market growth through 2025. While that may be a respectable increase, it pales in comparison to the cybercrime costs incurred.
\nSMALL BUSINESS
\n\u201cThere are 30 million small businesses in the U.S. that need to stay safe from phishing attacks, malware spying, ransomware, identity theft, major breaches and hackers who would compromise their security,\u201d says Scott Schober, author of the popular books \u201cHacked Again\u201d and \u201cCybersecurity Is Everybody\u2019s Business.\u201d
\nMore than half of all cyberattacks are committed against small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs), and 60 percent of them go out of business within six months of falling victim to a data breach or hack.
\n66 percent of SMBs had at least one cyber incident in the past two years, according to Mastercard.
\n\u201cSmall and medium sized businesses lack the financial resources and skill set to combat the emerging cyber threat,\u201d says Scott E. Augenbaum, former supervisory special agent at the FBI\u2019s Cyber Division, Cyber Crime Fraud Unit, where he was responsible for managing the FBI\u2019s Cyber Task Force Program and Intellectual Property Rights Program.
\nA Better Business Bureau survey found that for small businesses \u2014 which make up more than 97 percent of total businesses in North America \u2014 the primary challenges for more than 55 percent of them in order to develop a cybersecurity plan are a lack of resources or knowledge.
\nRansomware attacks are of particular concern. \u201cThe cost of ransomware has skyrocketed and that\u2019s a huge concern for small businesses \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t look like there\u2019s any end in sight,\u201d adds Schober.
\nAI AUGMENTS CYBER DEFENDERS
\nYou don\u2019t bring a knife to a gunfight.
\nThe U.S. has a total employed cybersecurity workforce consisting of nearly 925,000 people, and there are currently almost 510,000 unfilled positions, according to Cyber Seek, a project supported by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), a program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
\nFaced with a domestic worker shortage, the heads of U.S. cyber defense forces \u2014 CIOs and CISOs at America\u2019s mid-sized to largest businesses \u2014 are beginning to augment their staff with next-generation AI and ML (machine learning) software and appliances aimed at detecting cyber intruders. These AI systems are trained on big data sets collected over decades \u2014 and they can analyze terabytes of data per day, a scale unimaginable for humans.
\nThe panacea for a CISO is an AI system resembling a human expert\u2019s investigative and reporting techniques so that cyber threats are remediated BEFORE the damage is done.
\nIf enemies are using AI to launch cyberattacks, then our country\u2019s businesses need to use AI to defend themselves.
\nFOR THE BOARDROOM
\nCybersecurity begins at the top.
\nCSC has an urgent message for boardroom and C-suite executives: The status quo in cyberspace is unacceptable, which is spelled out in its groundbreaking 2020 Report which proposes a strategy of layered cyber deterrence \u2014 to protect all U.S. businesses and governments from cybercrime and cyberwarfare. But, this is hardly the first warning. \u201cSome of the same things we\u2019re recommending today, we were pushing 23 years ago,\u201d says Montgomery.
\nSomeone should be in the boardroom who will wave the red flag and get everyone else paying attention to the severity of cyber risks. Montgomery says attention is the number one priority, not bringing in a new CISO \u2014 instead empower the CISO that you have.
\nThe value of a business depends largely on how well it guards its data, the strength of its cybersecurity, and its level of cyber resilience.
\nIf there\u2019s one takeaway from this report, then let it be this: Don\u2019t let your boardroom be the weakest cybersecurity link.
\n\u2013 Steve Morgan is founder and Editor-in-Chief at Cybersecurity Ventures.
\nGo here to read all of my blogs and articles covering cybersecurity. Go here to send me story tips, feedback and suggestions.<\/p>\n

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