Global virus lockdown and cybercrime rate trends: a routine activity approach

Abstract

Cybercrime perpetuates as a major threat to the reputation and economy of a nation. There is consensus in the media and academic journals alike, that cybercrimes have incremented over the years. During the coronavirus pandemic in the year 2020, a global lockdown imposed by governments forced people to be homebound, leading to a subsequent surge in online users. This resulted in cybersecurity risk hitting close to home, with an upsurge in cybercrimes. This article attempts to make sense of the elevated cybercrime landscape. For the last two decades, criminological research have attempted to explore variants of technology-enabled crime and have examined theories to account for offending. This study proposes ‘Routine Activity Theory’ to explain the magnitude of cybercrimes during this unprecedented period that reshaped people’s routine lifestyles. Routine activity theory predicts that changes in opportunity situations (increase in online users), potentially escalates the convergence of motivated offenders and suitable targets in the absence of capable guardianship. Guardianship (security measures) is pivotal in this theory, to protect the targets (online users) from offenders (cyber threat actors). Furthermore, this paper offers practical security measures, in light of the specified cyber-attacks during this unprecedented period. If this theory is empirically validated, it offers opportunities to mitigate the extent of cybercrimes with an upsurge of online users, and more so for cybercrimes in general.