Compare cybersecurity risks in the U.S. and another country.

Symantec has created an index of cybercrime activity. The top five nations on the Symantec index are the United States, China, Brazil, Germany, and India. Spam emails are a very common source of cybercrime. Spams happen in all countries but the top countries that suffer from spam are China, Russia, the United States, and Brazil. Spams are more than just a nuisance. Most spam is now sent by botnets. A botnet is a network or cluster of malware-infected machines that the cybercriminal can control remotely over the internet. The top countries that suffer from botnets are India, Vietnam, China, and Russia.

The first form of internet fraud is phishing attacks. A phishing attack is when an attacker attempts to acquire a victim’s credential goods through deceit. The United States is targeted the most by phishing attacks. When an individual is successfully attacked by a phisher attack they usually will lose about $1,800 but if a business is successfully attacked they will lose about $20,070. The top countries that suffer from Phishing attacks are the United States, China, Russia, Ukraine, and Brazil. The second form of internet fraud is the advance fee fraud scheme. The advance fee fraud scheme is when a person will send an email to another individual telling them about something interesting or that they really want. The email could range from a love interest to winning the lottery. The attacker will ask for money advance fees and will continue to do so for as long as they can. The victims do not usually know that they are being scammed and will keep up the payments for a while. The end results could be devastating to their financial status. Nigeria has the most advanced fee fraud scheme in the area but other countries that suffer from this are the United States, South Africa, and Ghana. The third form of internet fraud would be ransom-related schemes. This consists of the attacker infecting another individual’s computer and looking for important files and encrypting them. Then they contact the individual saying they want money in exchange for the key to decrypt the files.

Cyber crime is all in different countries, some are different some are the same. The one fact I can say is that the United States seems to have a little bit of everything compared to some other countries.