Evaluation Of Cybercrime For Insecurity Of People In Digital World

Problem statement

Discuss about the Evaluation of Cybercrime for Insecurity of People in Digital World.

Prevalence of cybercrimes is increasing day by day in the digital world and it lacks the clarification about particular ‘cyber’ into these incidents. There is a contrast between numbers of cybercrimes incidents supposedly occur across the globe and relatively small numbers of incidents known as the prosecutions. Therefore, this contrast exposes a sharp gap in making out of the cybercrime and the knowledge of criminology. Today, technology now covers the life of the people and people cannot think their life without the internet and online media. The spectacle of technology now permeates the day-to-day life of the people and combines with the fear of dystopia (Liu, Musen & Chou, 2015). People now store their personal information and data on their mobile app, online account and computers. Therefore, hackers and criminals are targeting the computers and online media as the object of the crime through hacking, spamming and phishing. Crimes spread rapidly and the security of the personal data and information are at stake for the people. Cybercriminals are using the computer technology in order to access the data and personal information, banking information, business secret and they are using the internet for the malicious and exploitative purposes.

The main focus of the project is to evaluate the problem of the cybercrime that leads to the insecurity of people in digital life. In the first part of the study, the main focus is on the problem statement, aim and objects of the study. In the second section, the conceptual framework of the cybercrime and the insecurity of the people is explained through theoretical framework and hypothesis of the study is developed. In the later section, research methodology is given to collect the data for the future.    

People nowadays cannot think their lives without stepping into the digital world. The virtual world always attracts the young and inquisitive minds. People have multiple accounts on social networking sites and individuals use multiple wallets to paying the bills. Today, there are almost 200 billion internet-connected devices and people cannot imagine spending their lives without the possibilities and opportunities that the digital life brings to them (Lee, Kim & Kim, 2015). Organisations and global citizens are becoming vulnerable towards the cyber threats. Cyber attacks are common in today’s life as destructive cyber attacks steal the personal information and the cybercriminals peep into the common people’s internet activities (Sen & Borle, 2017). Media’s interest towards the cyber attacks has increased in recent years and volume of cyber attacks and complexity has been increased in recent time. The impact of digitalisation is clear on the wrong move when the personal data of the users are leaked and government agencies have defiantly discovered the value of the internet for espionage and internet of cyber warfare (Martin, Borah & Palmatier, 2017). Cybercrime damages the costs of that hit the figure of $4 trillion in 2017 and this figure represented that transfer of money and the information is not secured through online.

Research aim and Objectives

This paper will centre on the insecurity of the internet and data in this digital age due to the increasing popularity of the money sharing wallet and social networking sites. Internet users share a large amount of personal information online. A recent example of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica is real life case study where it is clear Facebook holds millions of people’s personal information. Corporations and the software builders are trying to spend to exceed $1 trillion to make protect the information. Therefore, this study will evaluate the cybercrime and insecurity of people in digital life due to increased misusing and steal of the personal data.   

The aim of the research is to find the importance of personal data on the internet and the ways through which the data theft can be avoided by the users. The purpose of the research is to explore the extent to which personal data is secured on the internet platform.

The objectives of the research are:

• To find out the importance of securing online data
• To explore the extent to which personal data can be shared on an internet platform
• To point out the impact of cybercrimes on the insecurity of the people in digital life
• To recommend some possible steps to prevent cyber threats and ensure security

RQ1: What is the importance of securing online data?

RQ2: How far it is secured to share personal data on internet platform?

RQ3: What is the impact of cybercrimes on the insecurity of the people in digital life?

RQ4: What could be some possible steps to prevent cyber threats and ensure security?

In this research project, diverse articles have been reviewed in order to get the idea of cybercrime and its impact on the digital life of the people. It is observed that most of the authors focused on the effective progress of cyberspace and the crimes associated with this. Most of the articles discussed increasing numbers of cybercrimes and the authors shared the concerned when maximum incidents did not have any records. This particular research is going to fill the vacuum as a maximum of the existing literature did not discuss the threat of cybercrime in digital life of the common people. This particular research will highlight the diverse threats for the people in the digital world regarding social networking sites and pay wallets.

This research will bring the output through the discussions of the challenges regarding various types of cybercrimes. The future researchers and the readers of this research will get to know about the diverse steps through which the people can prevent themselves from cybercrimes. The research outputs will be considered as the academic work for the issues of cybercrime and insecurity of the common people.  

Justification and potential output of the research project

Cybercrime activity is done through Information and Communication Technology as the criminals or hackers use ICT tools to target the businesses or the victims. The activities related to cybercrimes focus on the ICT tools to gain the personal and financial data of the targeted victims. The main target of the cybercrime is the ICT tool rather than the person or the corporation (Morey, Forbath & Schoop, 2015). Cybercriminals are at home with the technological tools and the cybercriminals make them potential with further research and find the loopholes into the system of the ICT tool. As stated by Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan (2013), most common types of cybercrimes are the identity theft, online scams, hacking, computer system attack, fraud, illegal online content and prohibited online content. Some of the online scammers use the digital piracy of the music and videos to make the business. These types of cybercrimes make the lives of common people vulnerable as the personal data of the people are in danger. People make online money transaction and people use online banking also; if the hackers get the secured information; the money and data all will be lost within no time. As opined by Vijayakumar (2016), governmental works and the corporations use the digital data and the common people suffer collateral damage to the secured data. Data breach can cause intense criminal activity in cyber media that will damage the credibility of the online platform.

In theoretical perspective, Choice Theory is gathered the ideas from the assumption that people are rational human that pursue their own considerations and interests.  Someone’s interests in works can harm another’s happiness. Individuals do the crime because the people choose to commit this. People sometimes attempt to maximise the pleasure and minimise the sadness and pain. Punishment of the criminals must be swift, severe and certain which will create difference. According to Sunde et al., (2017), data transmission across pay wallet or the mobile networks is the least secure method as the data and information are jeopardizing with financial and personal information. If the cybercriminals get the data and information about any victim; the victim will be danger in terms of data and financial loss. Right IT security is very important as the perception gap between practitioners and legislators are narrowed by stepping the concrete advice and levels of awareness.

Internet is risky place as some of the tech savvy criminals abuse the internet network and steal the data of the users. Phishing is the attack of the suspecting users of doing something what they originally do not do. Sometimes, the users click on the URL or e-mail attachment when this particular link takes the users to some other sites. Actors of the phishing attacks try to steal the users’ login identity and other credentials (Moore, 2014). As stated by Taylor, Fritsch & Liederbach (2014), ransomware is the particular crimeware where the victims’ computers can infect through phishing. Ransomware is the type of exploit kit and successful infection can draw encryption. The cybercriminals want money in return for the data. Identity theft is another type of cybercrime activity where the attackers can do the activities like seizing or controlling of the personal identity. The users can apply for the personal bank account and the cybercriminals desire to steal the data from the account of the users. The cybercriminals want to take some key information to steal the data (Brown, 2015). In addition, scams are not just one type; however; scams always offer some enticing things to trick the users to send them money in return of something. However; the offers are baseless and people lose their money in this process.

Literature review and conceptual framework: Cybercrime and insecurity of people in digital life

It can be concluded that people need to be more cautious when they share the information in online platform and the users should follow the best practices of internet security to protect against any kind of trick and cybercrime. As pointed out by Mazurczyk, Holt & Szczypiorski, (2016), cybercrime is continue to evolve and corporations train the employees to build the IT awareness so that they must not lose the secured and encrypted data.

In digital world, emerging and new security threats are developing. Technology in recent time is involved around individuals almost in each step (McMahon et al., 2015). Cybersecurity is very grave matter for now as the incidents of cybercrimes have been increasing day by day. All the incidents are not reported in the legal papers as 49% of the Millennials accept that the fact of having experienced cybercrime in the past 2 years. The survey done by The Norton Cyber Security stated that three out of ten people cannot detect phishing attack on the internet page (Leukfeldt & Yar, 2016). 86% of the common people stated that they have observed or experienced the phishing attack on email and on the internet page through desktop and laptop. Cybercrime is prevalent in today’s life and social networking sites play one such important role to spread the cybercrime. When people click on any unknown link; this page leads the users to another unknown web source. In this process, the information in the computer or in mobile can be leaked to unknown host. As stated by (Hui, Kim & Wang, 2017), worm virus-like SQL Slammer and Sasser made their way into cyberspace and these viruses spread via internet targeting the unpatched vulnerabilities. Through cybercrimes, cybercriminals share obscene or offensive content; the people easily fall into the trap of the cybercrime. The issue of cybercrime leads to the online harassment of the common people. For example, one hacking group named MOD allegedly stole the technical data and passwords of Nynex and Pencil Bell and other telecommunication companies. The damage was extensive and the companies lost more than $370,000. (Jhaveri et al., 2017) commented that there is now self-sufficient and sophisticated digital underground economy where the data is illicit commodity. The cybercrime group steal the personal data to fraudulently use these for profit. This decade is the advancement of the communication technology and this information revolution of society has converged to bring the industrialisation. Cybercrime rate has increased with internet adoption, deployment of broadband and the mobile internet access. 

Cybercrime is criminal phenomenon that blurs the traditional distinction of threats as the threats are of two types; internal threat (terrorist activity and criminality) and external threat (military) (Zhang et al., 2017). The users need to use strong password so that it would be difficult to break the code. Cyber-stalking and hacking can be prevented by using a strong password (Wright, 2017). The individuals who have internet connection at home; the users need to use trusted anti-virus as anti-virus can provide online security. Anti-virus can help the people from stealing the personal data and hacking of the cybercriminals. The users of the internet media must not send the credit and debit card details to any of the un-trusted site (Buczak & Guven, 2016). In addition, it is very important to keep the password of Wi-Fi so that other people are no able to use the Wi-Fi easily. In order to secure the computers from the eyes of the cybercriminals; it is very important to install firewalls and upgrade the operating system including the sensitive and private information.

Hypothesis development:

Hypothesis one: 

H₁: It is important to secure the data online

H₀: It is not important to secure the online data

Hypothesis two:

H₁: Personal data can be shared through online media

H₀: Personal data cannot be shared through online media

This research will be followed Quantitative research approach. Quantitative data are numerical data (Kaplan, 2017). Numerical method emphasises objective measurement and it will be easy to do statistical and numerical analysis of the collected data. In order to conduct the research, it is very important to find out the primary data from where the data can be collected. Quantitative research data is the systematic empirical investigation of phenomena that is observable and this data must have computational technique.

Literature review will be done based on the research topic cybercrime and the insecurity of the people in digital life. Literature review helps to provide the current knowledge along with substantial findings of the research area (Mackey & Gass, 2015). In this research, secondary data sources of the topic will be identified through article, journals, paper and websites. Literature review will be theoretical contribution of the research topic and literature review is the secondary data sources; not just the original work.

In this research, both primary and secondary data will be collected. Primary data are the raw data that would be collected through survey. Survey will be appropriate in order to collect the respondents’ opinion regarding cybercrime and the people’s insecurity in digital life. The researcher will prepare 15 close-ended multiple type questions in order to conduct the survey. There will be two types of questions; subjective questions and demographic questions.

Sampling: Survey will be conducted to the respondents who are active in the social networking sites. The researcher will identify the respondents who have the knowledge regarding online purchase and cybercrime. Therefore, the sample population will be young people aged between 18 and 35 who are active on social networking site. The expected sample size will be 150. The sampling technique will be used as random sampling.

The variable of the research are mainly two: independent variable is cybercrime and dependent variable is insecurity of people in digital world.

The researcher will use quantitative data analysis technique using software SPSS. SPSS software helps to identify the relationship between independent and dependent variables. SPSS software will be sing for local batched and non-batched statistical analysis. The researcher will use correlation and regression analysis to show the relationship between two variables. Different factors of the cybercrimes will be used to analyse the data and the tables and graphs will be used in this research to visually present the data and findings.  

• Chapter one: Introduction

This chapter will discuss research problem, aim, objectives, questions and justification of choosing this research topic

• Chapter two: Literature Review

This chapter will establish the theoretical standpoint of research area using secondary data sources

• Chapter three: Research methodology

This chapter will state about data collection process and data analysis technique

• Chapter four: Data findings and analysis

This chapter will tell about analysis of collected data through SPSS

• Chapter five: Recommendations and conclusions

This chapter will conclude the research findings stating the recommendations

Project timeline:

Activities	Week 1	Week 3	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7	Week 9	Week 10	Week 11	Week 12
Selection of the research topic	?
Reviewing the literature		?	?
Collection of the data				?	?
Data analysis						?	?
Drawing the conclusion								?
Recommendations								?
Final submission									?

Table 1: Project Timeline

(Source: Created by the researcher)

Task Name	Start Day	End Day	Duration (Days)
Project proposal	14.05.2018	28.05.2018	14 days
Literature Review	2.06.2018	25.06.2018	23 days
Data collection	26.06.2018	10.07.2018	14 days
Data analysis	11.07.2018	26.07.2018	15 days
Final report submission	27.07.2018	12.08.2018	14 days

Table 2: Project Milestones

(Source: Created by the researcher)

This approximate budget of the proposed research project will be $1400 if the project would finish on expected time; 12 weeks.

Purpose	Estimated spending
Collection of the secondary sources of data (online journals, books, articles)	$500
Collection of primary data through survey	$400
Data analysis through SPSS and other software	$300
Transportation and additional material (printing)	$200
Total	$1400

• During the literature review, the researcher will access online textbooks, online resources and articles and some of the resources will be expensive. This will cost approximately $500.
• Data collection process will be associated with survey and the cost will be included in posting on online. Preparation of the questionnaire and the survey form will be used through Google. The hard copies will be generated along with this. This cost approximately $400.
• For descriptive statistics and using the SPSS software; the researcher will keep the budget $300.

Reference List 

Banks, J. (2015). The Heartbleed bug: Insecurity repackaged, rebranded and resold. Crime, Media, Culture, 11(3), 259-279.

Brown, C. S. (2015). Investigating and prosecuting cybercrime: Forensic dependencies and barriers to justice. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 9(1), 55.

Buczak, A. L., & Guven, E. (2016). A survey of data mining and machine learning methods for cybersecurity intrusion detection. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(2), 1153-1176.

Hui, K. L., Kim, S. H., & Wang, Q. H. (2017). Cybercrime deterrence and international legislation: Evidence from distributed denial of service attacks. Mis Quarterly, 41(2), 497.

Jhaveri, M. H., Cetin, O., Gañán, C., Moore, T., & Eeten, M. V. (2017). Abuse reporting and the fight against cybercrime. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 49(4), 68.

Kang, R., Dabbish, L., Fruchter, N., & Kiesler, S. (2015, July). my data just goes everywhere:” user mental models of the internet and implications for privacy and security. In Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), 39-52.

Kaplan, A. (2017). The conduct of inquiry: Methodology for behavioural science. Abingdon: Routledge.

Lee, S. W., Kim, H. K., & Kim, E. J. (2015). A Study on Countermeasures for Personal Data Breach and Security Threats of Social Network Game. Journal of Korea Game Society, 15(1), 77-88.

Leukfeldt, E. R., & Yar, M. (2016). Applying routine activity theory to cybercrime: A theoretical and empirical analysis. Deviant Behavior, 37(3), 263-280.

Liu, V., Musen, M. A., & Chou, T. (2015). Data breaches of protected health information in the United States. Jama, 313(14), 1471-1473.

Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design. Abingdon: Routledge.

Martin, K. D., Borah, A., & Palmatier, R. W. (2017). Data privacy: Effects on customer and firm performance. Journal of Marketing, 81(1), 36-58.

Mazurczyk, W., Holt, T., & Szczypiorski, K. (2016). Guest Editors’ Introduction: Special Issue on Cyber Crime. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 13(2), 146-147.

McMahon, R., Serrato, D., Bressler, L., & Bressler, M. (2015). Fighting cybercrime calls for developing an effective strategy. Journal of Technology Research, 6, 11.

Moore, R. (2014). Cybercrime: Investigating high-technology computer crime. Abingdon: Routledge.

Morey, T., Forbath, T., & Schoop, A. (2015). Customer data: Designing for transparency and trust. Harvard Business Review, 93(5), 96-105.

Sen, R., & Borle, S. (2017). Estimating the contextual risk of a data breach: An empirical approach. Journal of Management Information Systems, 32(2), 314-341.

Stieglitz, S., & Dang-Xuan, L. (2013). Social media and political communication: a social media analytics framework. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 3(4), 1277-1291.

Sunde, I. M., Flaglien, A., Dilijonaite, A., Hamm, J., Sandvik, J. P., Bjelland, P., … & Axelsson, S. (2017). Cybercrime Law. Digital Forensics, 51-116.

Taylor, R. W., Fritsch, E. J., & Liederbach, J. (2014). Digital crime and digital terrorism. Prentice Hall Press.

Vijayakumar, V. (2016). Big data security framework for distributed cloud data centres. Cybersecurity breaches and issues surrounding online threat protection, 288.

Weber, M. (2017). The methodology of social sciences. Abingdon: Routledge.

Wright, S. (2017). The mythology of cyber-crime—Insecurity & governance in cyberspace: Some critical perspectives. In Cyberspace, 211-227.

Zhang, C., Hirschi, A., Herrmann, A., Wei, J., & Zhang, J. (2015). Self-directed career attitude as predictor of career and life satisfaction in Chinese employees: calling as mediator and job insecurity as moderator. Career Development International, 20(7), 703-716.