Discuss about the Relationship Between Cybercrime And Its Causal Factors.

Technology has evolved and with it the challenges involved with it the challenges and threats offered by the technology has also increased. One of the most readily used technology is internet which was developed by US military for communication purpose. However, since its commercialisation the security threats offered by the internet has also witnessed surging. The threats have proved to be of such significance that they are now considered as a separate section of crime and is known by the term “CYBERCRIME”. Multiple scholarly work has been assessed over the cybercrime and factors that are associated with it. The proposed paper will make contribution to the scholarly work. The sections following will discuss the project scope & objective along with reviewing some literary work that had been done on the subject (cybercrime) in the past before concluding the paper.

Cybercrime has proved its significance as a global threat for the online world and the people associated with it. Hence, it becomes necessary to identify, the root causes for the subject so that their remedial measures could be derivate. The relation between the cybercrime and its causal factor will also assist in devising methods to tackle them and hence, the objective of the paper is to identify the relationship between the cybercrime and the factors that causes it.

Identification of the relationship between the subject and its causal factor will assist in deriving remedial measures for the subject. Hence, the scope of pursuing research on the deemed topic is huge and can be of great assistance for future researches on the subject.

Cybercrime in Australia

Broadhurst (2017) in the reviewed article has focused on the cybercrime in Australia. The paper has taken in account of the various factors from definition, scope to prevalence and history of the cybercrime and criminals in Australia. Child exploitation materials (CEM) and the role that cybercrime plays in it has also been included as part of the paper. The paper has also focused on the importance of international co-operation in tackling the cybercrime has also been focused in the paper. The author has even derived the attention of how the cyber-security has emerged as one of the central pillar of national security and the defence personals are requesting training to counter the cybercriminals and cyberterrorists. To prove the criticality of the threat the author has cited evidence of some crucial cases such as the nuclear plant of Nantz, Iran which came under cyberattack in 2010. In conclusion, it can be stated that the reviewed article has cited some real-life examples to enhance the understanding of the subject. The paper has discussed some crucial factors however, has not included any graphs or statistics to validate the points put forth by the author. Though, the paper can act as a platform for further research that will attempt at developing remedial measures to counter the cybercrime in Australia.

Literature review

According to Brown (2015), there are legal loopholes which facilitate the cybercrime. The motivate that derives the paper is identification of the barriers that prevent the police personals from taking the necessary action in cybercrimes. Reviewing the article will enable, the author of the proposed paper to earn an insight into the subject and the barriers that prevent the Australian cyber-squad from preventing cybercrimes before dire situations are developed. The reviewed article has made claims that the cyber policies of the country and enabling technologies are the main cause for increasing rate of cyber-attacks in the country. The paper has even cited that the citizen of the country believes that the country police are incapable of tackling cyber scenarios and hence they avoid reporting of such incidents. The report has followed a case to validate it points. The report is cited some very crucial facts and unlike the previous article has offered some strong data and figures to justify the arguments made in the paper. Another notable fact about the paper is that the recommendations offered by the paper seems feasible and may prove to be of great vitality when implemented in real-world scenario. The recommendations offered in the article can be used to restructure the cyber laws in the country which may result in reduction of the cybercrime activities.

Hui, Kim and Wang (2017) in the reviewed article has discussed about enforcement of COC and the impact will cite on the DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. To attain the result for the paper, the authors recorded stats of DDOS attack on 106 countries between 2004 and 2008. The 177 cases were evaluated to reach on conclusion for the paper. The authors have stated COC as “a substantive legal framework to address any infringement against the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of computer data and systems, including common offenses such as distributed denial of service (DDOS) or malware attacks.”. According to them adopting the discussed framework can decrease the DDOS attack by 11.8 %. However, the findings also reveal that the enforcement of the discussed framework does cite some displacement and network effect. Another significant argument presented by the authors state that the cybercriminals are motivated by the strategies and economic incentives while selecting the target. The reviewed article does offer some insight into the mindset of the cybercriminals and can assist the proposed paper in understanding the causal factors of the subject. Finally, the article is well written and supports the argument with evidences and the recommendation made by them are viable especially when they suggested that the organisations and government need to invest capital to secure themselves from cyber-attacks.

Cybercrime in Australia

Caneppele and Aebi (2017) has attempted at evaluating the relation between decreasing rate of traditional crime and increasing ratio of the cybercrime. The paper has claimed that the Western highly industrialised societies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, western European countries and USA have witnessed a significant downfall in the traditional crime ratio while its non-developed countries such as Latin Americans and Asians have seen a rise in the ratio. On the other hand, the latter countries are very little affected by the cybercrimes the former has witnessed a major surge in such incidents. The reason that the authors have associated with the pointed argument is the rise of internet and they even states that the internet discovered a loophole for the cyberattacks in the traditional security measures. The paper has achieved its objective by reviewing the case studies on the subject along with analysing scholarly debates by the scholars & delegates who have ample knowledge on the subject matter. The article has assisted the author of the proposed in identifying one of the crucial cause of cybercrime and that is insecure use of the card by their respective owners. The paper has offered a graph of how card fraud has increased with years. Unlike the above discussed article, the discussed article is not well structured and has even some grammatical flaws, however, it has offered an insight into changing mode of crime and how significant it is to prevent them for a sustainable crime free country.

The article by Stalans and Finn (2016), presents the impact of Internet on daily activities happening across the world. There are increasing crimes throughout the world that has resulted in serious affects to various sectors and also the social life of an individual. The crimes have evolved in the recent years in a more destructive form that has impacted the world very badly. The cybercrime is done in three most destructive ways and they are digital piracy, hacking and harassment. These forms of cybercrimes have taken centre stage in the digital world and it is evident through the scenarios shown in the research papers. The digital world has led to crimes such as human trafficking, sexual harassments, hacking and sex market. The cybercrime is not only limited to these crimes; they are emerging in different forms despite of strategies to mitigate the crimes. The Internet is the ultimate source through which crimes are happening as illicit people find it an easy way due to millions of people using Internet regularly. The future of cybercrime is huge and can devastate the world. Finally, the opinion for this paper is that there are increasing crimes happening that are dangerous in many ways and impacts the life of people in various ways.

Legal loopholes and barriers to tackling cybercrime in Australia

Similar to the above reviewed article, Solano and Peinado (2017) has blamed the rise of internet as the cause for increase in cybercrime. However, the paper has focused on the side effects of cybercrimes and not just from economic aspect but also has taken consideration of the social and political context. Unlike Hui, Kim and Wang (2017), the reviewed article claims that economic incentives are not the most significant motive of cybercriminals but they are equally motivated by political, social factors as they are by economic factor. The findings from the paper reveal that civil liberties, corruption levels, political freedom, happiness, university enrolment, human development and other factors also motivates the criminals.  Reviewing the deemed article has enabled the author of the proposed paper to look at the cybercrime from social and political perspective. It has also enhanced the understanding, that the causes for cybercrime can also rest in social inequality and political misuse. Finally, the paper has offered some new perspectives while paving ways for further research in understanding the social and political impact of cybercrime.

Romanosky (2016), has attempted at evaluating the cause and cost that get involved due to cyber incidents. The paper has even evaluated whether or not there is incentives for the organisations in securing themselves from cybercrime. To achieve the objective of the paper, the author has sampled over 12000 cyber incidents that costed not just financially but also the privacy, data safekeeping and other factors. After identifying the losses, the author compared the losses with the organisational loses such as frauds and bad debts within the organisation. The findings reveal that cybercrimes do not have such significant impact on the organisation as claimed by different researchers however, the attacks are more crucial for the public and their data. The article has put forth a completely altered opinion as compared to the articles discussed above. The article has given more importance to the privacy breach rather than financial benefit of the criminals. The graphs and figures presented in the article makes it attractive for the readers and also enhances the reliability of the revelations. The paper has supported the perception formed by reviewing the article presented by Solano and Peinado (2017) that social and political context are equally, if not more important than financial aspect of cybercrime.

Kshetri (2016), in the reviewed article has cited their focus on the cybercrime scenario and cybersecurity procedures of India. The reason for selecting the discussed article lays on the fact that evaluating the cyber scenario in a developing country will assist the author to identify some core weakness of the cyber world that makes them vulnerable to cyberattacks. It will also assist in identifying the core factors that are available in developed cyber infrastructure (such as Australia, USA, UK and others) that make them more immune to cyberattacks than compared to its counterparts that is developing countries. The findings from the paper revealed that international relation along with institutional and developmental issues are crucial for cybersecurity and cybercrimes in the developing countries. The paper is a well decorated paper with ample of information about the science that states how more advanced cyber infrastructure is more secure against cyberattack but also are more frequently attacked institutions. The impact that the cyberattacks cites are also more significant to the developing countries than their developed counterpart. Finally, the paper has offered some crucial information that can pave ways for many future researches on the impact of cyberattacks in different countries but, proper structuring and maintained language could have made the paper more interesting for the readers.

Enforcement of COC and the impact on DDOS attack

From all the papers reviewed above the author of the proposed paper can argue that social and political perspective are as vital as financial aspect. However, the financial aspect can be more crucial depending on the economical aspect of the victim. If, the victim is economically stable such as an organisation or financial sound individual then the impact will be low while for a middleclass individual or for a SME (small and medium enterprise) the impact will be significant. It can also be stated that the social and political impact for all the individual will be same for almost all victims. Additionally, it has also been identified that economic motives are not the only factors that motivate a cyber-criminal but, political frauds and social inequality can also act as a motivating agent.

Conclusion

The report can be emphasised to conclude that with increase in the users of the internet, the cybercrimes have also increased and it also have social and political impact apart from the financial impact. The reviewing of the article even revealed some causes that are the root cause for cybercrime. The identified cause are economic incentives, social inequality and political frauds. Additionally, the financial impact on different victims of cyberattacks can differ according to their financial state. Hence, in conclusion, it can be stated that the cyberattacks are crucial for everyone but can affect different people differently and the literary work that had been pursued in the past does offer some gaps that can be utilised to carry out different researches which can assist in tackling the cyberattacks.

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Arief, B. and Adzmi, M.A.B., 2015. Understanding Cybercrime from Its Stakeholders’ Perspectives: Part 2–Defenders and Victims. IEEE Security & Privacy, 13(2), pp.84-88.

Broadhurst, R., 2017. Cybercrime in Australia. In The Palgrave Handbook of Australian and New Zealand Criminology, Crime and Justice (pp. 221-235). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Broadhurst, R., Woodford-Smith, H., Maxim, D., Sabol, B., Orlando, S., Chapman-Schmidt, B. and Alazab, M., 2017. Cyber Terrorism: Research Review Research Report of the Australian National University Cybercrime Observatory for the Korean Institute of Criminology.

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Caneppele, S. and Aebi, M.F., 2017. Crime Drop or Police Recording Flop? On the Relationship between the Decrease of Offline Crime and the Increase of Online and Hybrid Crimes. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.

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Shabnam, N., Faruk, M.O. and Kamruzzaman, M., 2016. Underlying Causes of Cyber-Criminality and Victimization: An Empirical Study on Students. Social Sciences, 5(1), pp.1-6.

Solano, P.C. and Peinado, A.J.R., 2017, June. Socio-economic factors in cybercrime: Statistical study of the relation between socio-economic factors and cybercrime. In Cyber Situational Awareness, Data Analytics And Assessment (Cyber SA), 2017 International Conference On (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

Stalans, L.J. and Finn, M.A., 2016. Understanding how the internet facilitates crime and deviance.

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