Beyond the pretty penny: the Economic Impact of Cybercrime

Abstract

Over the past decade, considerable research effort has been devoted to articulating and measuring the various ways through which cyber crime impacts overall society. The large volume of literature on the topic contains few attempts to produce estimates of the financial impact of specific cyber incidents and little agreement on how to derive such estimates. An important substrata of this literature focuses on placing a monetary value on the costs of cyber crime but little is known about the long-term economic impact to society. In this article, we first assess the shortcomings of existing cost estimates and focus on the relevant issues pertinent to the feasibility of deriving valid and useful estimates beyond cost-benefit analyses. Following a mixed top-down/bottom-up methodology, we propose a theoretical framework to systematically identify the short and long-term impacts of cyber crime both at the agent and societal level. This framework serves as the foundation to assess the economic consequences of cyber crime beyond monetary costs by focusing on the impact on economic growth.