The $1 Trillion Cybercrime Myth 94
wiredmikey sends this excerpt from SecurityWeek:
"A recent article on ProPublica dissected two commonly quoted figures about cybersecurity: $1 trillion in losses due to cybercrime itself and $388 million in IP losses for American companies. Both figures have been scrutinized and challenged by many, and viewed as typical security vendor FUD. ... The $1 trillion figure is attributed to anti-virus vendor McAfee, while the $388 million in IP losses number belongs to Symantec's Norton division. According to ProPublica, 'The report was not actually researched by Norton employees; it was outsourced to a market research firm, StrategyOne, which is owned by the public relations giant Edelman.' The problem with both of these figures — $1 trillion and $388 million — is, as Microsoft researchers pointed out earlier this year in a report fittingly titled 'Sex, Lies, and Cybercrime,' they are studded with outliers. In one example they cite that a single individual who claims $50,000 losses, in an N = 1000 person survey, is enough to extrapolate a $10 billion loss over the population. In another, one unverified claim of $7,500 in phishing losses translates into $1.5 billion over the population. The Microsoft researchers concluded: 'Are we really producing cyber-crime estimates where 75% of the estimate comes from the unverified self-reported answers of one or two people? Unfortunately, it appears so. Can any faith whatever be placed in the surveys we have? No, it appears not.'"
these things... they happen (Score:3, Funny)
i once lost 1.21 jiggawatts in a time travel scam...
Symatec source citations (Score:5, Funny)
"Up to $1 Trillion in losses[1] and "$388 million in IP losses[2]"
[1] - someguysblog.com
[2] - foxnews.com
Re:We trust Microsoft now? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, in this case, it is basically Microsoft defending itself against the FUD from Norton, because the only reason you should need Norton is if Microsoft Windows sucks.
Which is ironic, because Norton sucks like a black hole with daddy issues.
Re:Of course it's made up (Score:4, Funny)
The real way to compute cybercrime numbers:
1) number of copies of Norton sold * price
2) number of copies of McAfee sold * price
3) number of copies of Windows sold * price
4) number of copies of MS Office sold * price
Adding up 1-4 will give a good estimate of cybercrime. We should probably add in an additional $10 million to also cover phishing scams.