Effects of Cybercrime
Name:
Course:
Course code:
Tutor:
Date:

Effects of Cybercrime
Introduction
According to Brenner, Cybercrime, commonly known as e-crime/computer crime, is a criminal act whereby computer or computer networks serves as a target, location, means or as the source of the activity. Its scope covers all the criminal activities revolving around the computer. Such malicious activities include identity theft, web site defacement, financial fraud, and cyber bullying. In an organization, computer crimes involve hacking customer databases as well as stealing of intellectual property. Usually, computer users think that they can protect themselves, their personal computers and their accounts by using antivirus software or anti-spyware, but this is not always the case. E-crimes are very sophisticated and target consumers, public and private institutions (Wall). Computer crimes range from outside parties hacking the computer networks and phish in malicious programs that give users a deceitful sense of security, instigating them to disclose vital information. Some of the effects of cybercrimes are:
Loss of intellectual property
The greatest effect of cybercrime is the loss of intellectual property as well as confidential information of the business. However, it is not easy to determine the exactly the extent of the losses. Partially, cybercrime is not a zero-game because the stolen information is not fully gone. Infiltrators steal only the company plans including the customer lists and the working strategies (Westby). Amazingly, the company may not be aware that it is no longer in control of the information flow and they are controlled outside their infrastructure. The spies take control of the company’s network and access the information that runs the institution. More often, such infiltrators are the company’s competitors who wish to make similar products and