Future solutions to cybercrinie
With online technology, IOT data, and CMCs becoming more commonplace in society, cybercrimes that generate data loss, data manipulation, and unauthorised access to devices will increasingly require a reliable solution to mitigate their impact. As big data continues to grow in its prospects and facilities, cybercrinie and cybersecurity thr eats will continue to emerge as urgent inquiries that need immediate solutions and long-term remedies.
There are several avenues to better manage and enforce cybercrinie laws through traditional criminological mechanisms and interventions. For one, our political and legal institutions need to be better equipped to keep pace with the rapid changes in digital technology and the online landscape (Dupont, 2013). Extant research has shown that more attention and resources are needed at the government level to ensure that our law enforcement officers and government officials are up-to-date on the threats of cybercrinie and cybersecurity (Bossier & Holt, 2012, 2013; Dupont, 2013; Holt & Bossier, 2012). Legislators must also find ways to better structure legal codes so that they can be more extensible to offenses that may emerge as a result of technology rather than requiring constant updates to codified law. Minimising legal loopholes and developing more effective apprehension strategies to disrupt cybercriminals in an effective maimer are also essential (Dolly, 2018; Dupont, 2013).
Another possible solution to cybercrinie and cybersecurity is to enhance online target hardening and digital guardianship at both the organisational and individual level. This can range from increasing the noise that hacking and malware attacks make (which allows for a faster detection process), to industries developing devices that have stricter authentication processes, as well as heavily monitored device-to-device conununications (Dolly, 2018). Since data is the commodity under attack, creating strategies and methods to protect it from unauthorised access and manipulation should be a top priority for both industry and individual actors moving forward.
It is worth noting that, similar to other forms of crimes, cybercriminals are most likely to victimise entities that lack the necessary resources to defend themselves (Choi & Lee, 2017; Dolly, 2018). Targets range from industry IT systems that lack the required funds to build firm protective security platforms, to the everyday internet user who does not exercise anti-virus protection on their computer and routinely opens unidentified online attachments. Open sources with loose networks that contain great amounts of propriety data (such as educational systems) are also prime targets for cybercrime because they contain valuable information and lack the proper cybersecurity measures to safeguard itself from attacks (Dolly, 2018). In order to assuage the damage generated from cybercrimes, both public and private organisations must understand the severity of the threat posed by outdated and/or unregulated software and should conduct regular training for all of its staff and employees so that emerging cyber thr eats are anticipated, combatted, and ultimately mitigated.
It is evident that the rise of cybercrinie presents a unique challenge for academic researchers and policy-makers, as the number of calls for service for these offenses, the composition of offender populations, and victim characteristics are not well explicated in official data sources (Brenner. 2009; Wall, 2007). Furthermore, large-scale nationally representative self-report studies of deviance and crime do not include measures for cybercriminality, making it difficult to understand the predictors and pathways to online offending (Holt & Bossier, 2016).
As a result, researchers have begun to use alternative data sources as a means to understand cybercrime. The breadth of cybercrimes that occur create data points from online sources that could be leveraged to examine these crimes. Despite the many challenges associated with big data research, it is imperative that cybercrime researchers continue to operationalise big data and data mining techniques to examine online behaviours (e.g., Benjamin et al., 2016; Holt & Bossier, 2016). Progressing in this way will not only enhance the discipline, but also improve the quality of findings in cybercrime and criminal justice sciences moving forward.
