There is a prevalent gap in cyber crime rate monitoring that is currently being attempted to be addressed. In doing so, a cluster analysis is being performed on 190 countries from around the world measuring spam, malware, fraud, piracy, the country’s GDP and internet connectivity. The two former measurements have been proven to strongly correlate with cyber crime activity.

The top five nations that utilize malware, botnets, phishing server hosting, command and control servers are the United States, China, Brazil, Germany, and India. The United States is also placed as one of the top spam sending countries alongside China, Brazil and Russia. Within these studies, it was concluded that spam makes up more than 76% of all spam is sent from botnets with over half of all internet internet traffic being spam. So, how does the United States stack up against China when comparing cybersecurity risks?

According to statistics for 2016, China has suffered financial loss up to 91.5 billion in cybersecurity related events. About 37% of internet users in China have suffered economic loss due to internet fraud through online payment systems. Just within the first half of 2016, 37% of internet users suffered economic loss due to internet fraud, and 84% have experienced some other negative impact from information leaks. (KPMG China, 2016)

In the United States, 32.7% of people report being a victim of a cybersecurity breach. In 2016, cybersecurity events caused a financial loss of $1.419 million. In 2017, there was a loss of $21.2 million followed by a rise to $27.4 million in 2018. This number is continuing to rise over time. Of 1.7 million cases of fraud cases reported to the Federal Trade Commission in 2019, 23% reported a monetary loss. Imposter scams were rated first out of ten in the top fraud categories (Facts + statistics: Identity theft and cybercrime).

When comparing the United States’ risks with China’s, China narrowly reports more incidents occurring. Although there is only a margin of 4.3% in incident occurrences, the Chinese financial loss is staggeringly higher. With the number of cybersecurity incidents steadily increasing as the use of the internet increases, China will likely continue to be at a higher risk than the United States without increasing awareness and better practices in both the public and private sectors.

Facts + statistics: Identity theft and cybercrime. (n.d.). Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-identity-theft-and-cybercrime

KPMG China, M. (2016, August). Retrieved from https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/cn/pdf/en/2016/08/cyber-security-in-china.pdfhttps://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/cn/pdf/en/2016/08/cyber-security-in-china.pdf