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The Internet has become the central nervous system for our networked life. As a global network of loosely connected IP-based networks, it reaches everywhere and provides a common platform for communication to governments, businesses and consumers.
With the Internet, however, a new kind of criminal has emergedthe cyber criminal.
The pervasive nature of cyber crime today threatens loss of proprietary corporate information to the loss of life. Various forms of cyber crime have emerged, from predators exchanging child porn and scammers stealing identities to countries attacking countries.
Quantifying cyber crime
The US FBI estimates that various types of computer crimes in the U.S. now cost the industry about US $400 billion, while officials in the Department of Trade and Industry in Britain said computer crime rose by 50% in 2006 over 2005.
It is estimated that only 5% of cybercriminals are ever arrested or convicted because the anonymity associated with Web activity makes them hard to catch, and the trail of evidence needed to link them to a cyber crime is hard to unravel. The CERT Coordination Center estimates that as much as 80% of all computer security incidents remain unreported.
Combating the threat
There are certain steps to be taken before we can successfully combat cyber crime.
First, it is important to increase our understanding of the many languages and dialects (protocols, applications and services) being spoken in the cyber world.
Network traffic monitoring and measurement is increasingly regarded as an essential function for understanding and improving the performance and security of our cyber infrastructure. With networking technologies and services evolving rapidly, as witnessed by the explosive growth of the Web, accurate network traffic monitoring is required to ensure security in a cyber world.
Second, it will be timely to promptly identify and tag cyber users and communities of cyber users whose activity and content may harm the safety and transparency of the cyber world.
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