Cybercrime: A Trillion-Dollar Economy Demanding a National Framework

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have published a report: "Cybercrime Classification and Measurement".

Cybercrime is no longer a side issue—it’s now a $10.5 trillion global economy, making it the third-largest economy in the world, behind only the U.S. and China. And it’s growing 12–15% annually. Yet, as this report reveals, the U.S. lacks a centralized, standardized system for measuring and classifying cybercrime —leaving the U.S. vulnerable and blind to a threat growing in both scale and sophistication.

Key Insights:

Underreporting is a national weakness

Fear of reputational damage, legal exposure, and inconsistent definitions keeps many organizations from reporting incidents.

A national classification framework is critical

We need a federal standard to unify how cybercrime is defined, recorded, and analyzed—especially for private-sector cooperation.

Trust-building mechanisms must be embedded

The report advocates for anonymous, secure data-sharing pipelines that encourage businesses to report breaches without fear.

Public-private coordination must scale fast

Real-time national cyberintelligence requires unified efforts from regulators, law enforcement, academia, and enterprise.

Without metrics, there’s no defense

Clear KPIs and consistent categories are essential to allocate resources, hasztag#audit risks, and prevent losses across sectors.

All globalrisk indexes—from World Economic Forum to Allianz Technology and Marsh McLennan—place cybersecurity in the top 3 risks facing the global economy. In many reports, it holds the 1 spot. As the digitalization of business and society accelerates, so too does the attack surface. And with it, the sophistication and scale of cybercrime. The more we digitalize, the more valuable we become to adversaries. Defenses must scale with risk—or risk overtakes everything.

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Author: Sebastian Burgemejster