This chapter intends to discuss cybercrime and cybersecurity laws in their current and future contexts. The initial part of this chapter discusses terms and issues related to the cyber world. This portion has touched areas where the requirement of cyber laws is increasing with the advancement of time, technology, and types of cybercrimes. The later section of this chapter will look at existing and widely used cybersecurity laws from around the world. We have emphasized on Cyber Security Laws in India, the US, and the UK. The reason for focusing on these countries is that there are many multinational organizations that have offices spread across these regions. However, it should be noted that cybercrime is not limited by national or geographical boundaries and once committed, is dealt with under international law and in accordance with the trade agreements between the countries involved. The authors have included two famous trans boundary cyber cases that were brought to justice.
Top1. Introduction
Crime is an inevitable phenomenon that has existed since the birth of mankind in the world. With the growing age crime also has changed its forms, ways of occurrence, the jurisdiction of its operation, and so on and so forth. As and when society has taken relief that it has successfully created a protective shield against a form of offence, the criminals have come forth with a new one. With the advancement of technology, the introduction of computers has become an essential element of modern life. Today, humans depend on computers and allied technology for all our needs, starting from education to our livelihood, relaxation to business, socializing to banking, etc. The operation of criminals has also not been far from this technology. Cybercrime, or in simple words crimes committed with the aid of computers, has become the greatest strength for people with malafide intentions. Crimes can be committed in two ways using technology and computers. First, new kinds of offences are committed like Data Theft, identity theft, banking fraud, etc., which had no existence prior to the introduction of computers and databases, and secondly, the old offences are committed using the new technology (Ritu, 2017).
The Internet is considered as one of the greatest inventions of mankind which has made communication and diffusion of information from one part of the world to another very smooth and hassle-free. However, this has both positive and negative impacts on our lives. On the positive end, the instantaneous sharing of information has a great impact on education, business, entertainment, and social interactions (Ritu, 2017). The world survived the covid era more smoothly because of the internet services which kept us living some of our daily chores even after being immobile and stuck at our homes. On the negative end, however, the internet and its amenities have provided a wide possibility for criminals to commit crimes, with the much lesser worry of being caught by the administrators and wide jurisdiction can be covered as cyber-crimes at a much lesser cost of commission of crimes. In contrast with traditional economic criminals, cyber criminals find it much easier to commit such crimes as the same can be done only with a click of the mouse (Haung, 2011).
In the post covid era, it was seen that an abnormal rise has occurred in the number of cybercrimes, particularly those of economic crimes such as phishing, where fraudulently a person is made to reveal his personal information like passwords, credit card pin etc. and has been subjected to huge economic losses. Experts say the probable cause for such an abnormal increase is probably compulsory confinement during the lockdown, fear and anxiety for the future. As per data gathered by Google and analyzed by Atlas VPN, there has been an abnormal increase of 350% in data phishing during the Covid period (Edward, 2020). The same situation exists across the globe. Increasing uses of viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, malware etc. has made the population on the verge of fraud that can be committed at any time, and everyone is at equal risk of getting defrauded (Radoini, 2022)
The above graph (Figure 1) depicts the humongous growth in cybercrimes during the Covid period of 2020, which is reported to be one of the most abnormal growth mankind has ever experienced.