Governments should spend more to cybercriminals, researchers say

Improving the ability of law enforcement agencies to catch cybercriminals should be a priority when governments decide how their cybersecurity budgets get spent, according to University of Cambridge security engineering professor Ross Anderson.

Anderson is one of seven computer researchers from the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and the U.S. who recently performed an analysis of the costs of cybercrime at the request of the U.K. Ministry of Defence. Their findings were published in a research paper that will be presented on June 26 at the 11th Annual Workshop on the Economics of Information Security in Berlin.

The researchers split the costs of computer crimes into direct losses, indirect losses and costs associated with defending against those crimes in the future. Read more...