Cybercrime Costs Global Economy $445 Billion a Year: Report

Cybercrime costs the global economy about $445 billion every year, with the damage to business from the theft of intellectual property exceeding the $160 billion loss to individuals from hacking, according to research published on Monday.

The report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said cybercrime was a growth industry that damaged trade, competitiveness and innovation.

A conservative estimate would be $375 billion in losses, while the maximum could be as much as $575 billion, said the study, sponsored by security software company McAfee.

"Cybercrime is a tax on innovation and slows the pace of global innovation by reducing the rate of return to innovators and investors," Jim Lewis of CSIS said in a statement.

"For developed countries, cybercrime has serious implications for employment."

The world's biggest economies bore the brunt of the losses, the research found, with the toll on the United States, China, Japan and Germany reaching $200 billion a year in total.

Losses connected to personal information, such as stolen credit card data, was put at up to $150 billion.

About 40 million people in the United States, roughly 15 percent of the population, has had personal information stolen by hackers, it said, while high-profile breaches affected 54 million people in Turkey, 16 million in Germany and more than 20 million in China.

(Also see: Target cyber-breach affects up to 40 million credit and debit cards)

McAfee, owned by Intel Corp, said improved international collaboration was beginning to show results in reducing cybercrime, for example in the takedown last week of a crime ring that infected hundreds of thousands of computers known by the name of its master software, Gameover Zeus.

© Thomson Reuters 2014