Discussion: Cybercrime threats

Discussion: Cybercrime threats: What is the greatest cybercrime threat in the U.S. today? How can it be prevented…

Discussion: Cybercrime threats

Respond to the following in a minimum of 250 words:

• What is the greatest cybercrime threat in the U.S. today? How can it be prevented?
• Do you agree or disagree with the penalties in your state for cybercrimes? Do you agree or disagree with the federal penalties for cybercrimes? What punishment do cybercriminals deserve? Explain your answers.
• How can we protect ourselves against cybercrimes?

Discussion
Cybercrime threats
Cybercrimes are evolving into more dangerous and sophisticated ways that criminals, terrorists, and predators use to gain access to various databases. The greatest cybercrime threat is phishing, which relates to social hacking. Reports indicate that financial pretexting and phishing account for 98% of all social cybercrime incidents (Moore, 2020). In particular, the largest risk of data breach comes from employees and internal staff and can be traced to carelessly opening phishing emails, malicious link, or employee actions. Such attacks allow hackers to access user logins, credit card credentials, and personal financial information or access to private databases.
In the State of Arizona, cybercrimes attract misdemeanor and felony charges. The crimes range from unlawful access to a computer to misusing the access to alter, obtain property, fraud, or destruction of a computer network. For a misdemeanor, the penalty is six months imprisonment, a fine of $2500, or both. A felony charge, the punishment is a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years in prison, a fine of $150,000, or both. The penalties for the cybercrimes are proportional to the crime, and offenders deserve the punishment. Due to the sophisticated nature of cybercrimes, the penalties provided in the law serve as a deterrence.

Taking security measures and being aware are some of the ways to prevent cybercrimes. State governments deal with cybercrime through creating multiagency groups, including; the Cyber Threat Response Alliance, FBI, and Homeland Security. Employee training is crucial in combating cyber-attacks as it helps increase awareness. To individual companies, they have to set a Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies to establish rules and procedures for bringing personal devices into work (Moore, 2020). Besides, setting user access privileges helps limit employee access only to resources and information to fulfill their roles only. Besides, at an individual and company level, people should work to build and implement more robust defenses such as the latest technologies, stronger passwords, and protection systems to guard against ransomware breaches, credit card fraud, and malware.

Reference
Moore, M. (2020). Top Cybersecurity Threats in 2020. Retrieved 26 August 2020, from https://onlinedegrees.sandiego.edu/top-cyber-security-threats/