COVID-19 IMPACT ON CYBERCRIME

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Title of the paper:	The Role and Place of Covid-19: An Opportunistic Avenue for Exponential World’s Upsurge in Cyber Crime
Authors	Sogo Angel Olofinbiyi, Shanta Balgobind Singh

Introduction

The literature paper explains COVID-19’s role and place in society. In this case, it discusses how this unexpected pandemic increased the cybercrime rates in the community. Government and non-governmental organizations should fight the epidemic and provide mitigating factors to the virus’s side effects, for example, cybercrime, as witnessed in most parts of the world. This study has provided a model that citizens globally should adopt to protect themselves against these cybercriminals and minimize the outbreak of cybercrimes accelerated by the pandemic. The approach offers by the paper is for an individual to put some efforts to mitigate the crime, prepare for the attack in case it happens, respond to the cyber attack if it happens to you are attacked, and finally recover from the cyber attack if by any chance you are attacked. The paper also has advised individuals to be more vigilant because the government’s effort to mitigate the coronavirus spread does not prevent cybercriminals from attacking you. The paper’s main contribution is that’s it has provided some mechanisms to trigger cyber crimes, which has been accelerated by the novel COVID-19 pandemic. The mechanism will help the citizens be more secure before adapting to the proposed framework.

Literature Review– 1 – 2 paragraphs

According to (Buil-Gil & Díaz-Castaño, 2020), COVID-19 has been found to have brought a lot of probes far from the lockdown measures. The pandemic also has brought socials effects that affect both online and online individuals. The paper has presented some short-term impacts of the crisis, and this online-fraud problem can be solved in the UK. According to the literature paper, after lockdown measures in the UK were announced in March 2020, Cybercrimes in the country was confirmed to rise stiffly two months later. The paper confirms that the crime rate rose by 95% compared to the previous two months before the lockdown measures were enforced in the country. It is reported that the months with the stickiest measures reported many cases of cybercrime. This is, therefore, a clear indication that the COVID-19 pandemic is not only a health crisis but also a socio-economics crisis for every country, either rich or poor.

Methodology

The data for this research paper was sourced from the World Health Organization. As of this article’s writing, 209 territories and counties had confirmed a case of COVID-19 within their borders. The WHO report, as of this year, April showed that more than 1.2 million people had contracted the disease globally. However, almost 70,000 deaths had been confirmed, with the US leading both in the number of cases and deaths. These data used in the research paper were retrieved from the WHO repositories.

The research methodology for this paper is secondary data analysis. This paper analyzes how COVID-19 has brought impact to cybersecurity in the world. The secondary data is found from the WHO repository and other cyber-related data companies across the world. After the secondary analysis, the paper will provide a solution mechanism on how this crime can be prevented or how to come out of it once you found yourself a victim.

After analyzing the secondary data, the paper found that COVID-19 was a health crisis and a global socio-economic crisis that hid very county hard, which was bothered by their economic status. Be it rich or developing country, each felt the hid of the virus. The paper also noticed that when the stickiest measures were imposed in most countries, the number of cyber-criminal cases increased tremendously. This results from a lockdown measure, which makes individuals stay indoors, thus becoming idle, and the idle mind is the devils’ workshop. According to the National Fraud and Cybercrime Reporting Centre in the UK, losses amounting to $8000,000 were uncovered due to almost 20 reports affected by viruses. NFCRC further illustrated that some of the losses were face masks, which were to be supplied by fraudulent online sellers. More than $14,000 were paid by the victims only to be supplied with imaginary masks.

Similarly, according to the US’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, some victims were conned to click on malicious links to get the number of people affected in a certain region only to be redirected to criminal websites where they were asked to pay some bitcoins to be provided with the information. Technological advancement had provided a solution to enhance the physical distance constraint of COVID-19 through video-conferencing. However, cyber-criminals attacked this space and supplied dirty images while the sessions were on.

To protect the global population from cyber-attacks, the paper has provided a model to be followed by any concerned individual to remain safe from cyber-criminals. Firstly, the general public member is advised to have some mitigating effect on cyberattacks to prevent emergencies that would be hazardous if it happens. The second measure is preparedness. Users must be prepared before an attack to enhance their readiness and response whenever an attack happens. The third mechanism is the response. The general public is required to put in place response mechanisms which will be undertaken shortly after an attack occurs. The response activities should be aimed at preventing further damage and threats posed by the attack. The fourth mechanism is recovery. Recovery techniques should be provided to enable the victim to recover from the attack. This process aims to bring people and property to at least their prior states before the occurrence of the attack.

The paper also advises the general public member to note that the government’s in the fight against the pandemic does not prevent them from attacks but exposes them more to cybercriminal threats. It is, therefore, upon the people to take personal responsibility and protect themselves.

Iterative management scheme for emergence management.

Discussion, Analysis, and Conclusions and future work

According to the author, the world should have a joint fight against cyber crimes, just like the joint war against the COVID-19 novel pandemic. The author also has called upon the world health experts to come out with a globally accepted vaccine to cure the virus. This, as per the author’s thoughts, will help remove the lockdown restrictions imposed by governments, which accelerated the cybercrime rates globally.

The researcher has only focused on individual measures to be taken to protect oneself against cyber-attacks. The role of any government is to protect its citizens. Therefore, it is fair for the paper to provide both individuals and government measures that can be taken to mitigate the threat posed by cybercrime during this period of COVID-19 pandemic. As the paper illustrated, the fight should be a collective responsibility between the government and its citizens and not individual.

References.

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Olofinbiyi, S. A., & Singh, S. B. The Role and Place of Covid-19: An Opportunistic Avenue for Exponential World’s Upsurge in Cyber Crime.

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