Cybercrime is the use of cyberspace or computer technology to facilitate acts of crime and deviance. In 2009, a report by a NESTA-funded (National Endowment for Science and the Arts) research group at the University of Brighton (Rush et al. 2009) warned that cybercrime was likely to spread in periods of recession. It might even replace certain types of on-street crime because of its relatively low-risk nature. It seems that the group’s prediction may have come true.
The Brighton group argued that European Union member states need to work together to tackle such offending, given that so many cybercrime operations take place across national borders, often originating in developing countries. Rush et al. also called for more transparency from banks and companies over the scale and nature of the threat from cybercrime, and also about the potentially inconvenient counter-measures which might be required to address it. Finally, given the complexity of cybercrime, the group also called for truly multidisciplinary research initiatives to address the issue, to include sociology, criminology, development studies, economics, IT studies, innovation studies and even strategic studies.
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