I feel that international law currently is not a strong method for handling global cybercrime. Many grey areas still exist with how loose cyberspace is as a form of sending and receiving attacks that may or may not cause serious harm to a country. Furthermore, as was stated in the World Economic Forum article, the most difficult part lies in proving that a state was involved in an attack and that the utility of non-state actors only further clouds who is behind a cyber-attack that could be from anywhere. Countermeasures and international law stepping in are also hindered by cyberspace and cyberattacks needing to meet a certain damage threshold to receive attention.

However, international law can improve, but it will be difficult. This requires there to be a unified idea of laws pertaining to cyberspace between all collaborating countries. This can then build the groundwork for forming a unified plan to combat the difficult aspects of cybercrime, such as the definition of attacks, their constituted threshold, and non-state actors.

Global cybercrime can also be tackled by other measures. The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence (CCD COE) is a significant start in improving international law and cyberspace with the Tallinn Manual 2.0, which covers the application of international law on “below the threshold” cyber operations. Countries, on an individual level, can also improve by investing more in their national cybersecurity structure to crack down on global cybercrime. International organizations such as NATO or the UN can also bring more attention to the poor efficiency of international law on cybercrime and propose possible solutions.

In short, the efficiency of international law in addressing cybercrime is poor. It is held back by the fast rate of cyber-attacks, their ability to be from anywhere, the involvement of non-state actors, and the threshold of a majority of cyber-attacks being low enough not to involve international law. However, by establishing a unified understanding of law within cyberspace, international organizations collaborating on a new approach, and individual countries putting in their effort to mitigate cybercrime, the issue will not only begin to shrink but also have a new structure that is directly applied to solving it.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/why-international-law-is-failing-to-keep-pace-with-technology-in-preventing-cyber-attacks/

https://ccdcoe.org/uploads/2018/10/Art-09-Is-the-International-Law-of-Cyber-Security-in-Crisis.pdf