The Internet is no longer a limited source of information or communication - after a rather slow start the Internet has become an indispensable asset to all organisations and all modern day people. Without the Internet you will have severe problems conducting several every-day tasks in today’s western society.

However, at the same time as the development of the Internet has accelerated with tremendous speed - so has cybercrime! Today’s cybercriminals are no longer innocent script kiddies, but have evolved into sophisticated, organized and profit seeking criminals. The threats are increasing rapidly, both with regard to different kinds of threats, as well as the number of threats. Threats today include extortion, reputational damage, fraud, phishing, service disruption, information theft and money laundering,. We assume that different types of information threats are likely to be the most profitable kind of cybercrime. One important element of cybercrime that is likely to increase in the future is social engineering attacks - where criminals trick people into giving information by preying on their vulnerabilities and needs.

The heavy increase in the number of threats are clearly shown when you look at the development of cybercrime during the latest years. Two years ago, there were around 300 malicious threats emerging every month; today the amount has climbed up to 2000, largely due to the heavy increase of robot networks.
The rapid increase of threats and dangers does not slide through our minds without consequences. Everybody ’s attitude is obviously changing and the users are looking for help and guidance from the authorities.

Governmental responsibility?

According to the Gartner Group Inc. users say the governments should do more to protect them from Internet fraud such as phishing attempts. In one of the most extensive studies yet on consumer attitudes about identity theft, approximately 50 % considered that the governments were not doing enough in fighting ID-theft. The study suggests that more than 1 million consumers have been tricked into divulging their personal information to senders of so-called phishing emails, with financial losses totalling nearly 1 billion dollars.
The Gartner study also found that the growing anxiety is hampering e-commerce growth. 42 % of the respondents reported that they were becoming more sceptical to online shopping. According to the survey phishing seems to be the threat that most people fear. This fear seems to be reasonable taking into account the growing number of phishing attempts. In fact Gartner estimates that almost 73 million of the 148 million US adults now online, have received at least one phishing email, up 28 % in a year.

And there is only one reason for the steep augmentation in phising attempts - they work!
But the phishing problem creates other headaches for companies, more than 80 % of the consumers report that they are reluctant to trust email communications from any company as a result of the confusion caused by phishing. The same research also showed that 46 % of all consumers have spotted some kind of malicious software on their desktop.

Return to the past?

People are obviously becoming more reluctant and worries the future of the Internet has become more prevalent. Questions are being asked. What is going to happen? Will people still use the Internet when performing sensitive tasks? Are we going to see a return to the pre-Internet époque with actual people performing services like in the old days? Are we ever going to beat the hackers? Or are the hackers going to develop their techniques even further and use the Internet for increasingly dangerous purposes, such as terrorist attacks and war-related behaviour?

It is difficult too predict the future, but it is quite certain that the Internet is not only going to survive, but evolve further. In imperfect harmony with the hacking development. The users will have to cope with the hacker threat and all the other dangers that are present, and continue to try to protect themselves in the best possible way.