Trends of cybercrime from 2001 to 2021: cybersecurity action plan for Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and by extension the Internet, have brought immense sociological transformations to humanity. Despite the development the Internet has brought to humanity, the Government of Papua New Guinea (GoPNG) has not lost sight of the fact that the use of ICTs and other related supporting devices are fraught with cybercrime and cyber insecurities that constitute challenges to global law enforcement agencies in PNG and other nations of the world. This paper reports the trends on victims of cybercrimes from 2001 to 2021 and presents an action plan for PNG. The data analysed in this study was explicated from the Internet crime reports published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National White Collar Crime Center (IC3). The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and XGraph component of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences’ Population Pyramid. The results confirmed that the number of Internet users that were defrauded increased exponentially from 2016 to 2021. Results from the data explicated from the World Bank on Internet use, revealed that the population of Internet users in PNG and Australia will increase at a minimum rate of 1% to 2% for the next few years. These findings suggest that cybercrimes will be on the rise as the number of Internet users increase at 1% to 2% in PNG and Australia in the next few years. The findings present appropriate strategies to address the incidences of cybercrimes in PNG.