Cybercrime statistics in India: What do the numbers show?

Cybercrime statistics

Looking at all the latest relevant data about cyber crimes statistics from the past few years, we can spot a rising trend with cyber crimes in India. 

What may cause this increasing trend? What’s the root of cybercrimes in India? Is there a solution that could be drawn by analyzing the most up-to-date cybercrime statistics? 

Let’s look at all the relevant information below and see if we can find a common denominator to why recent cyber attacks are becoming a bigger and bigger threat.

Cybercrime statistics in India

600% increase in cyber crime because of COVID-19 pandemic.

Based on a recent study conducted by Purplesec, the numbers show cybercrime has grown by 600% due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One primary cause of the increasing numbers in a cyberattack today is the fact that many people have been unemployed. A large proportion of people who kept their jobs have switched from working in an office to working remotely, from their homes. 

This may likely lead to people in a search for new types of income, even if this means that some of them may resort to various forms of online crime, like phishing, hacking, and cybersecurity attacks.

44,546 cyber crimes have taken place in India in 2020.

Taking advantage of the global pandemic, hackers and cybercriminals have diversified their malicious behavior. Posing as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or World Health Organization (WHO) representatives and officials is one of the latest phishing email scams that have been discovered. According to the latest numbers available, as part of a larger cybercrime report put together by Statista, 44,546 cybercrimes have taken place in India in 2020. And that’s a pretty big number if you ask us.

Karnataka is the state with the most cyber security attacks.

The Indian state with the most cyber crimes cases in 2020 is Karnataka.

Approximately $2 million is the cost of all the data breaches in 2020.

It estimates the total cost of all the data breaches from 2020 at around $2 million.

Cybercrime statistics against women in India

Cyber crime cases have grown by 63.5%.

Statistics of cyber-crime provided by India Times show that cyber crime cases in India have grown by 63.5%.

Cyber crimes against woman’s rise by 7.3%.

The same study reveals that the number of online attacks against women has risen by 7.3%.

India is facing a real problem with cyber security threats for women, because the state’s law doesn’t have the definition of cyber crime very well defined. This leads to a lot of loopholes where women who become victims of online scams or threats cannot find justice within the Indian justice system.

8379 cyber crimes against women in India.

The National Crime Records Bureau of India has published a cybercrime list where it shows the number of online attacks against women for 2019. 

The report shows a lot of interesting facts about hacking and any other type of cyber crime that has been conducted against Indian women. 

The total cyber crimes against women reported in 2019 is 8379.

5967 of other crimes against Indian women.

During the same interval of time, the total number of other crimes against women has reached 5967.

Famous cybercrime cases in India

Having the world’s second-largest population, with China being first, it comes as no surprise that cyber crime has found a home in India. The more internet users you have, the more potential victims of cyber attacks and online scams a user can be subjected to. 

Anything from phishing schemes, to fake online lotteries and even sexual harassment cases, has been reported, in a constantly increasing trend in India’s cybercrime scene.

But let’s go through some of India’s biggest cybersecurity attacks, judging by the number of people affected and the material damage caused. 

The Big Basket Case in India

20 million users affected.

Big Basket is an Indian online platform with an estimated number of 20 million users, as per data recorded in November 2020. A data breach for a platform with so many active users is no joke, but, unfortunately, surprise has taken Indian authorities. 

The information stolen from Big Basket’s database includes personal details such as full names, emails, password hashes, pins, contact numbers, full addresses, dates of birth, IP addresses, locations, and the list can go on and on. 

$40,000 is the selling price for the stolen information on the dark web.

The entire set of information has been uploaded for sale on the dark web for $40,000, according to Cyble, a cybersecurity company, quoted by The Indian Express.

Because cybercrime is relatively a new thing, at least on a global scale, Indian authorities are still lacking the technology, infrastructure, and know-how to deal with cyber hackers.

The Aadhaar security breach case in India

Another shocking case in India’s cybersecurity crime in recent history is the Aadhaar security breach. Not only cybersecurity threats and breaches affect private enterprises in India. Quite the contrary.

$2 million is the cost for data breaches in 2020.

The most valuable data to be stolen is usually the one that can be found on state-owned online platforms.

 The entire cost of cyber attacks in India reached an estimated $2 million in 2020.

Over 1 billion people affected by this cyber security attack.

With Aadhaar, which is India’s unique citizen identification system, the data breach compromised very important information which included bank details, address and biometrics of over 1 billion Indians.

Other notable cyber security crimes in India

While not as big as the previously mentioned two cases above, India has seen its fair share of cybercrime in the past couple of years. 

The ones that stood out the most involve:

  • the website of India’s Prime Minister (narendramodi.in), 
  • Haldiram Snacks Pvt Ltd, which is a huge snacks producer. 
  • Wedmegood, a large Indian wedding planning platform 
  • and the Indian Railways’ online ticketing portal, IRCTC. 

And these are just the reported cases, because of their notoriety. 

The number of unreported cyber attacks is way higher, but we stuck to the ones which rank among the top 10 cybercrimes in India.

Types of cybercrime in India

Indian cyber crime is growing at an exponential rate, and we can easily see what the trends are by looking over the latest report issued by LegalServiceIndia.com. 

Hacking

  • Over 313,000 cybersecurity incidents were reported in 2019 alone. 
  • The punishment for this cyber crime is 3 years of imprisonment or a 500,000 rupees fine.

These numbers come from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which is the state agency responsible for tracking and responding to cybersecurity threats.

Cybercrime stats show that hacking is the most common form of online attack experienced by people in India. It legally defined hacking as gaining unauthorized access to an external system. 

Denial of Service

  • 10 billion is the record number of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) 
  • The Indian Penal Code punishes this offense with 3 years in prison or a fine of up to 500,000 rupees.

These incidents in India have hit a record high in terms of total DDOS packets, reached in August 2020, according to a study by Radware, an international cybersecurity firm. 

Denial of service means bringing down a server or restricting the owner’s access to its own server. 

Virus Dissemination

  • Approximately 174 municipal institutions, covering over 3,000 subset organizations, were the target of ransomware in 2019.

There’s almost no internet user that a digital virus has not affected, at least once in their lifetime.

  • That’s a 60% increase from 2018.

Virus dissemination involves introducing malicious programs in another system.

Credit Card Fraud

  • India is among the top 5 countries for credit card fraud.
  • When it comes to cyber-crime security, credit card fraud is at the top of the list, given the enormous impact it may have on the potential victim. 
  • A 42% increase in credit card fraud cases was recorded in Mumbai alone, from 2016 to 2017.
  • Anyone who steals your physical credit card, or your credit card details, may use that information to subtract all the funds present in your account or to make online payments in your name.
  • Phishing 
  • Barracuda Networks states that a 72% increase in phishing cases has been recorded due to COVID-19 related cyberattacks.
  • Phishing is yet another very common cybercrime. Usually, an individual, or a group of individuals, creates an online scam via email. 
  • Through this approach, they try to collect credit card information and any other user login credentials.
  • Cyber Stalking 

The state of Maharashtra in India, with 409 reported cases in 2019, ranks as first with

cyber stalking and bullying incidents against women and children 

This cyber crime can occur via email, or via any other online method, like direct messaging through social media. 

  • India had 777 cases reported during the same period.

Cyberstalking is pretty hard to show, but we can define it as using an electronic communication platform in order to harass or frighten someone.

Global Cybercrime statistics

We’ve gone through a couple of cyber security facts, covering mostly India, but let’s see how the cyber crime statistics by year look like at a global scale.

Cyber crime statistics by year

Over, 43% of data breach victims were found to be among small businesses in 2019.

This proves to show that the smaller the business is, the more lacking in cyber security it proves itself to be.

In 2019, the average period to identify a data breach was 206 days.

When it takes an average of 206 days to identify a cyber security problem, you can easily understand why the need for getting extra safety measures should be a top priority for any business. 

500 million online gamers have had data comprised during the past 5 years.

The world’s population is close to 8 billion people. Now imagine that half a billion people have been a victim of some form or another of online fraud or attacks. 

That’s 1 out of every 16 people. 

Between 2005 and 2018, 8,854 breaches were recorded in the US alone.

The numbers of data breaches have grown consistent since then and keep in mind that we’re only looking at the discovered cyber attacks. 

There’s no telling how many cyber threats remain undiscovered each year.

Statistics regarding the increase in cyber crime

Security breaches have risen by 11% in 2019, as opposed to 2018.

With an increase of 11% in cyber crimes, there’s no telling what the growth may be in the future. The only certain thing is that the numbers will continue to grow, and as professional cyber security teams get better, so do the hackers trying to breach into their system.

By 2021, an estimated number of 300 billion passwords will be used online.

Let’s imagine that each password was $1, to put things in yet another financial perspective. That means that 300 billion is approximately the net worth of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, the world’s largest online store.

By 2022, it forecasts the total global spending on cyber security to reach $133.7 billion.

To put things in a better perspective, that’s close to Elon Musk’s (CEO of Tesla) entire net worth. 

Cybersecurity services are expected to go over 50% of a company’s budget by 2021.

When almost every cyber crime chart you look at shows that cyber attacks are growing exponentially, it comes as no surprise that companies will start increasing their allocated budget for cyber protection.

9% was the growth of espionage against the US in 2019.

While a lot of the numbers depict what happened in 2019 or 2018, this is largely because cyber attacks take a long time to be traced and tracked down. 

Most of the time, you will only be able to make a report covering cyber crime data for 2019, in 2021, for example.

The only year with a rare decline in phishing was 2018.

These stats are here just to show that cyber crime is constantly increasing and the only year when we saw a soft decline was 2018. Phishing rates went from 1 in 2,995 e-mails in 2017 to 1 in every 3,207 e-mails in 2018. 

In 2019, phishing attempts have risen by 5% as opposed to 2018. 

Cyber crime statistics by country 

Based on the latest stats provided by Statista, India is the leading country in the percentage of users who have encountered a form of cyber crime. 

1. India – 80%

2. United States – 61%

3. France – 60%

4. New Zealand – 59%

5. Australia – 59% 

According to the Australian cyber-crime statistics, “The Land Down Under” is the last country to be above the global cybercrime threshold, with about 59% of its internet users being subjected to online crimes.

6. Global – 56%

7. United Kingdom – 55%

8. Italy – 53%

9. The Netherlands – 51%

10.  Germany – 47%

11.  Japan – 42%

Social media crime statistics

In 2018, social media fraud attacks have increased by 43%.

According to RSA Security reports, this 43% increase in social media cyber attacks is largely because of the use of automation tools used for posting on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more.

Over $3.25 billion in global revenue per year is the estimated number for social media-enabled cyber crimes

This is a huge number. The research conducted by Bromium and McGuire shows the ever-increasing role social media plays in cyber crime.

Numbers show that these cyber security trends will keep pushing new limits and achieving record high numbers year after year.

Since 2017, online fraud revenues have increased by 60%, with the “help” of social media 

As social networks evolve and grow in popularity, cyber crime will pursue. Hackers will definitely go where online users are to be found, and the more users a social media platform has, we will subject the more to cyber attacks.

$630 million per year is the value of stolen personal data gained from social media.

This includes any type of data, from personal information, to bank account details, and all the way to username and passwords. 

Over,1.3 billion social media users have been comprised in the past 5 years.

That’s almost 20% of the world’s population. If these numbers don’t show just how big of a threat cyber attacks are, nothing will.

Computer crime statistics

The FBI has recorded over 2.2 million computer crime complaints in 2020.

The exact number delivered in their latest report is 2,211,396 complaints in 2020 alone.

Over, 100,000 cyber crime complaints were from victims over the age of 60.

The total financial loss is approximately $966 million. 

Since May 2000, approximately 5,5 million computer crimes have been reported worldwide.

The FBI’s division for combating computer crime (IC3) was established in 2000. Since then, a total number of 5,679,259 global complaints have been reported to the IC3.

It estimates the total loss generated by cyber security crimes at $13.3 billion.

According to the same report, the numbers will continue to grow if it will not educate internet users on cyber-crime prevention and protection.

How many cyber attacks happened in 2020?

8.3 billion records have been data breached in 2020, according to GovTech.

How many cyber crimes are committed each year?

  • 1,473 is the total number of recorded breaches in 2019, an increase from 1,257 in 2018, based on an analysis conducted by Purplesec.
  •  In 2018 alone, a total of 164.6 million records were exposed.

How much money is lost to cybercrime every year?

  •  $6 trillion is the global cost of cybercrime estimated for 2021. That would make it the third largest economy in the world, right after the US and China.
  • According to the same report, cybercrime will reach a total cost of $10.5 trillion each year by 2025.

What percentage of cyber attacks are human error?

  • 29% of cybersecurity attacks are attributed to human error, in an estimate provided by Comparitech.

How much does cybercrime cost the economy?

  • $1 trillion is the cost of online crime to the worldwide economy. 
  • 50% is the rise of The Hidden Costs of Cybercrime, as compared to 2018, according to McAfee.

What percentage of cyber attacks are phishing attacks?

  •  26% is attributed to phishing while 23% to password sharing.

What will the projected cost of cybercrime be in 2021?

  •  $6 trillion is the projected cost for 2021, in a prediction made by Herjavec Group.

How often is there a cyber attack?

  • Every 39 seconds a hacker attack occurs, shows a Clark School study conducted at the University of Maryland.
  • That’s over 92 attempts each hour
  • Which is a little over 2,215 each day 

All the numbers regarding cyber security show that the only way to tackle this huge global problem is through massive campaigns with the role of informing internet users about the dangers they are exposed to. 

What safety measures can you take against cyber threats?

However, there are some things you can do by yourself in order to prevent being a victim of cyber attacks.

  • You can use a 2-factor-authentication software for logging in to all your social network accounts, or online banking apps.
  • You should change your passwords regularly (at least once a month). 
  • You should avoid sending any personal information, e-mail addresses, or banking details via email.
  • Don’t reply to suspicious emails. Even if they don’t request any sensitive information straight up, chances are that they will require you to fill in some forms with private data.
  • Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know on social media. They could be scammers looking for their next victim.
  • Double-check any website that requires any personal details before filling them out. Usually, you shouldn’t be required to provide more than an e-mail address and your name. 
Conclusion

Given all the data and information that shows how cyber crimes in India are on the rise and judging by the global cyber crime statistics, the only safe thing to do is to use all the safety measures available when browsing the internet. 

A way to educate people on how to interpret cyber crime statistics could be very helpful in decreasing the number of cyber crimes in India, and worldwide. 

The more educated a segment of the population is, the less likely is it to become a victim of cybersecurity attacks and online fraud.

 

 

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