The Perpetration and Prevention of Cyber Crime

Abstract

Cyber crime has become an integral part of the transnational threat landscape and conjures up pressing images of nefarious and increasingly complex online activity. More recently, the concept of ‘organized crime’ has been attributed to cyber criminality. There has been subsequent disagreement and confusion concerning whether such crime is a derivation of traditional organized crime or an evolution of such crime within the online space. This paper analyses the opaque state of affairs which has been exacerbated by the relative lack of clear evidence attesting to and supporting either scenario. Technological advances have always been used to the advantage of the criminal fraternity. The crucial question that remains is whether those advances have merely facilitated the commission of physical crime or whether in fact they have led to the creation of a new wave of traditional, but virtual, organized crime. The paper also explores the behavioral ramifications on cyber crime on the informational value of the internet and its usage in consumer with demographic analysis level of its threat and increasing crime rate thus eroding the attractiveness of internet as a viable marketing channel.