Research Paper

Running head: CYBERCRIME IN THE US: A LEGAL PERCIPECTIVE

CYBERCRIME IN THE US: A LEGAL PERCIPECTIVE 27

Cybercrime in US: A Legal Perceptive

Authors Name:

Institution Affiliation: University of the Cumberland’s

Date: 06/05/2020

Table of Contents Abstract 3 Introduction 4 Cybersecurity Accounts 5 Evolution of Cyber threats and cyber laws 6 Concerns and Encounters of cybercrime in the United States 8 Topmost crimes in the US 10 Malware 10 Debit card fraud 11 Compromised passwords 11 Social phishing 12 Impacts of Cybercrime to the United States 12 Cybercrime an society 13 Cybercrime and finance 13 Impacts of cybercrimes on laws and regulations in US 14 A Legal Framework 15 The Gramm-Leach Biley Act (GLBA) 16 The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) 18 Other significant acts (“Federal Trade Commission, Electronic Communications Privacy Act”) 19 Combating cybercrimes 20 Assimilating robust security measures 21 Updating the operating systems 21 Training and awareness 21 Encryption and backing up data 22 The future of cybercrimes and change in cyber law landscape 22 Conclusion 23 References 25

Abstract

The expansion of the internet has unbolted up more gaps form cybersecurity and to curb the epitome of incompetency and move beyond just conforming rudimentary measures the outlook of legal laws sinks the gap between technology and the need for cybersecurity. Though the internet has created opportunities for developing economic and social networks, research has proven that at least 75% of the United State population has been exposed to cyber threats either intuitively or involuntarily.

In the pursuit of legal value, the following research looks at how cybersecurity has affected the United States, commencing the research by expanding the account of cybercrimes, looking at the types of cyber threats, and effects of cyber threats to the society and the government as a whole. Then the research expands on how technology has affected internet security, issues, and challenges of cybersecurity in the United States and top crimes that have affected businesses and citizens in the country. Furthermore, the research looks at the legal perspectives of the United States in curbing cyber threats. Under the law perspectives, the research focuses on existing acts at different sectors that protect the CIA triad, the role of the laws in curbing cybercrimes, and how cybercrimes have affected the legal perceptive in US. To conclude, the research looks at the future of cybercrimes and how the dynamic deviations in technology and cybercrime will affect the authority and dispense of cyber laws.

Introduction

According to statistics conducted in US, at least, 32.7% of the respondents indicated that they had experienced hacking activities either through their social media accounts, or an internal activity such as email phishing. The Stata report indicates that as of 2018 at least 37.2% of US internet users were susceptible to internet banking fraud, 57.6% were vulnerable to malicious software, 34.1% to identity theft and 69.7% of users’ were vulnerable for phishing activities such as fake phone calls, SMS, and fake emails (Clement, 2019).

A report produced by, Waghole (2019, pg. 518) indicated that by 2021, it’s projected that cybercrimes will increase the cost of operations by up to $6 trillion. The authors indicate that as of 2017, over 780,000 records were exposed to cyber-attacks and today the United States has accounted for 28% of the data breaches experienced globally. Following a report produced by the National Computer Security Survey (NCSS) which purposed on discussing the impact of cyber threats on business in the United States (Rantala, 2008) indicated that at least 67% of the businesses experienced at least one cybercrime in their systems, 11% of the companies experienced cyber theft, and 24% of the business experienced external threats related to cyberattacks. The report becomes even more intriguing as it outlines that the businesses did not consider the legal perspective of the threats as they did not report the incidents to law enforcement. In 2015, approximately 68% of the victims accounted for a loss of above $10000 due to cyberattacks, and most of the businesses experienced a system downtime that reduced their profitability margin.

Cybersecurity accounts

The account for cyber threats is dated back in the 1970s when the initial phone system became vulnerable. Back then, hackers were referred to as “phreakers” and they discovered that mobile phones had unique codes and tones that if twerked could be exploited. After incessant experimentation over hardware chips across different telephone companies, for example Bell Telephone Company, the hackers were able to conduct a social engineering scheme that tricked the Bell company worker to hand over the telephone codes that were ultimately utilized to access the internal system.

At that time, there existed a conflicting factor between law and internet security. The United States didn’t have defined legislation regarding actions that could be taken in case of such activities. According to Shinder and Cross (2008), it was not clear that information systems stood as complex systems yet delicate structures that could be vulnerable to attack and resulted in the enactment of the first federal law in 1986. As technology became more and more intricate superior cybercrimes emerged, for example, the Morris Worm virus that affected more than 6000 computers, and accounted for damage of over $98 million.

In 1990 the United States formed the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that would respond to cyber threats occurring due to overzealous mistakes. Over the past decade, a lot of fraudulent activities have emerged, some even causing fortunes to individuals and the government as a whole. For example, in 2007, a hacker, Max Butler, employed a’ network phishing techniques and was able to fraud over $86 million. Likewise, in 1999, the NASA Defense system was hacked by a 15-year-old, Jonathan James, by installing a backdoor on the US. Departments’ server and the hack allowed him to access millions of government emails and internal systems including systems depicting personally identifiable information (PII) for various military agencies. According to the Forbes report produced by Catherine (2006), the NASA department was forced to shut for three weeks to repair the damage.

Recently, due to the intensification of technology, many organizations have become vulnerable to attack, others now recording huge losses. For example, in 2014, when eBay- an e-commerce company, lost user names, addresses, and passwords which accounted for over $145 million. Also, the CryptoWall system was exposed that accounted for $325 million. In 2017, Equifax, a US-based credit firm, exposed over 143 million users’ accounts and the company incurred huge losses due to government laws.

Evolution of cyber threats and Cyber laws

In the present day, cyber-attacks have evolved from landline hacking to crypto-jacking. According to Madsen (2019), recently, the nature of cyber threats have advanced to survive. Even though cyber experts are assimilating superior techniques to curb the exponentially growing cyber threats and close security loopholes. Research indicates that there is a hacking activity every 39 seconds meaning that the cybercrime world is continuously evolving and if stiff measures aren’t assimilated, the alarming growth rate of cyber-attacks will overwhelm cybersecurity measures and practices.

A new era of cybercrime has emerged as from the development of the first virus by Morris in 1988 and the new century has delivered even more convoluted malware such as worms and Trojans. An even more complex cyber threat in the 20th century has cut an edge to many organizations –cyber jacking. With the technique, a hacker can incinerate a malicious JavaScript code into a user browser and “harvesting” processing power of devices that have accessed the browser and the user mines cryptography from the websites without a user’s consent. Thought-provoking, right?

The evolution of cyber threats now leaves a question to the United States government and the role of the constitution in regards to protecting the citizens against cyberattacks. In the United States, the data security measures are promulgated by the federal, state and local government depending on the degree of severity and intricacy of a cyber threat. As a supplementary to constitutional laws, data security landscape is backed up by regulatory codes and contract obligations documented either between businesses and people, business and businesses or government and businesses.

As an obligation to mitigating cyber threats, businesses are not only driven by applicable laws but are also driven by civil litigation threats, security infringements, and regulation pressures. Likewise, the United States government has extended information access right as from prohibiting the government itself from accessing users’ data to restriction privacy companies utilizing the information including data that does not directly affect users. According to Kurth (2018), there has been a far-reaching progression in data security acts whereby today the US government have enacted a breach notification act whereby organizations are required to notify the clients and the federal government of any breach activity if it affects more than 25 people. Such laws have influenced the re-engineering of other laws especially in Europe such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The data and regulatory landscape in the United States are constantly budding with the dynamic change in technology and the escalation of cyber threats whereby subdivisions are constantly requesting the proliferation of new legislation and incorporation of new amendments to the prevailing US constitution sector addressing cybersecurity laws. The evolving sign of law proliferation is showing no sign of abating as the shift seemingly cut across state and federal level.

The federal law delineating breach notifications is recurrently been amended to address emerging cybersecurity threats, for example, cyber jacking, therefore covers a larger background of imposing aggressive laws and sanctions. Nonetheless, federal government agencies, private regulators such as the “Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (FPB), Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), the protection Bureau of Health and Human Services (PBHS)” often update and review the existing laws and policy statements regarding the usage and dissemination of public data. As of 2017, the US government has been keen when it comes to the use of internet. For example, the Electronic Communication Privacy Act was reformed by the federal legislation which out-ruled the initial rule of 180 days whereby companies were allowed to delete emails older than 180 days in their systems.

Concerns and Encounters of Cybercrime in the United States

Though the United States government is obligated to protect users from cybercrimes, the current technology has created obstacles when it comes to investigating cybercrimes in the state. According to Katharina (2019) even though cybercrime clashes in tandem with cyber laws, there exist changes such as anonymity and attribution. Anonymity enables users to conduct online activities without revealing their actual locations. An example, when a user assimilates a proxy server to create a connection. Basically, the proxy server stands as an intermediary server that connects a computer to a client’s server over an anonymous device to create a secure connection. The structure of such a connection enables the user to hide their internet protocol address. Anonymization can be legitimate whereby a user could have a substantive reason for navigating the internet over a masked IP address. An example if the user wants to express their rights to communication or their desired thoughts without revealing their identity.

Conversely, cybercriminals can assimilate anonymity to encrypt their network and hide their identity for example a cybercriminal using browsers such as Freenet, tor browser to create an anonymous network. With anonymization, the government cannot differentiate individuals who are on the internet to conduct decent activities and those culprits who have intentions of hacking user activities. Also, it becomes difficult to trace the origin of a hacking activity as the connections are masked across anonymous IP addresses.

When it comes to attribution, a user or an entity is supposed to differentiate who or what is responsible for an explicit cyber threat. The goal of the process is to attribute and connect particular cyber threats to a specific device or an entity, for example, identify state-sponsored cyberattacks. Attribution is further complicated by the use of anonymity and “malware-infected zombies” such as botnet and malware devices that can create a connection over a remote network

Recently back-tracing has become a challenge – the process by which a cybercrime is traced back to the original sender either by unmasking the IP addresses or using log entries. Back tracing can be a challenge and time consuming as it depends on the level of expertise, and the complexity of the connection. Also, privacy laws restrict the government from accessing users’ identities. For example, when trying to identify a cyber threat, a regulation agency may be obligated to obtain the IP address of the user through the Internet Service Provider. From time to time, the ISP provided cannot just provide details of the IP addresses without a proper legal consent, sometimes even mandating the investigators to obtain a subpoena or a warranty order.

Lack of international standardization limits the government from investigating cybercrimes when it comes to international matters. For example, if the United States government is accusing another country of cyber-attack, the evidentially prerequisite requires the consent of admissibility in court and consent of responsibility for an international state.

Topmost cybercrimes in the US.

It would be prejudicial to discourse cybercrimes without at least asserting the topmost cybercrimes heart-rending the United States. Reports indicate that 8 out of 10 people in the US have reported a cyber threat case or a close person who has been affected by cyber threats. It’s only just to testify that now Americans are more worried about cybercrimes than any other crime in the city. In an annual cybercrime survey, Norton Agency produced a report indicating the topmost cyber threats including malware debit card fraud, password hijacking and social media access (Norton Cyber Security, 2017).

I. Malware

According to the Norton survey, 57% of the individual indicated that their devices either smartphone or laptops had been affected by malware. Malware is a general term representing any type of software developed to disrupt an event of an information system, or cause damage. Example of malware includes viruses, ransomware, worms, Trojans, spyware, etc. A virus alters the file system of the user so that when the user runs a certain task the virus is simultaneously executed. Many organizations have been able to curb viruses and they comprise up to 10%.

Just like a biological worm, a computer worm replicates itself and spreads through the system without the users' consent. Trojans are unique as they masquerade as authentic programs, for example, pop ups that request the users to run the program as a measure of cleaning the PC. It would be incomplete not to mention ransomware, whereby the malware gains access to user’s files, block user access to those files, and in return requests the user to pay a given ransom to regain access to such files.

II. Debit card fraud

A debit card or credit card fraud accounted for the second-highest type of cybercrime in United States. Often users receive a cynical message such as “card-not-present”. The fraud has ballooned in the United States recording losses of up to $4.76 billion in 2016. As depicted by Hadar (2019) in the Washington Post, over 80% of credit card user information has been compromised, for example, the Equifax data breach case that exposed over 130 million credit card numbers.

III. Compromised passwords

Passwords are delicate structures in which users opt to think that they are secure but surprisingly, passwords are exposed by unpredictable devices or platforms such as most trusted banks. When a data breach occurs, the hacker are able to access users' credentials inclusive of the passwords. According to a Forbes report by Winder (2019), over 4 billion passwords were exposed in 2019 which accounted for over 44 million Microsoft shareholders. Users’ are advised checking their password credibility, by espousing strong passwords such as a combination of letters, alphanumeric and special characters.

IV. Social phishing

Following a Stata report by Clement (2020) conducted in 2019, over 79% of users had a social network profile. With the proliferation of technology, it's factual to conclude that the percentage is projected to intensify by 85% in 2021 since social media networks have been an open platform for users, and a vulnerable platform whereby it's informal to access personal data. Statistics show that Facebook security breach exposed over 50 million user accounts which accounted for at least half the US population. It’s then recommended that social media fans avoid posting private information on social pages such as birthdays, dates of birth, and place of the location to prevent possible trace trough the PII.

Impacts of cybercrime to the United States Economy

Cybercrime has created a global impact as from the society, economy, and social status to financial impacts. It is evident that information technology has created a variety of benefits in education, the health sector, finance, communication just to mention a few. It’s the same technology that has ushered a wave of cyber threats. According to Ashford (2018) at large, the influx of cybercrime has affected sectors that were thought to have superior technology. The dominance of technology in the public and the aftermaths associated with its integrations has demonstrated a need to protect information systems and assets at all levels of operation not only by the public, businesses but also to the United States government as a whole.

I. Cybercrime and society

The society is at large assimilating technology to simplify their day to day activities. For example, society has integrated technology to ease communication through social media features. The society needs technology to simplify education, and such platforms request users to pass their personal information. The payment process has been centralized through technology, whereby rather than visiting the monetary sectors the users can access the services from a remote location. According to Rahaman (2016), technology has enabled users to save time, save costs, ease mobility, and create a landscape for innovations. With the dynamic changes and proliferation of technology, it’s almost impossible to exhaust the imperativeness of technology.

As society continues to integrate technology in their personal lives, the technology builds up troves of personal information, centralizing consumer’s personal information as from bosom data to mundane information. An increase in ambiguousness and digitalization has made society more prone to cyber threats. Technology affects the society if the consumers’ loss their financial status or if the technology is utilized to steal intellectual property, activities such as identity theft, loss of privacy, and finance cost incurred when assimilating security measures.

II. Cybersecurity and finance

The influx activities of cybercrimes in the finance sectors can be attributed to several factors such as easy access to tools and technology that infiltrate financial systems, innovative technologies and ideas invented by the hackers, increase in the level of intelligence by the cybercriminals, and expansions of cybercrime midpoints, for example, anonymous browsers such as tor browser and hacking communities.

In the finance sector, cybercrime has directly or indirectly impacted economic growth, job development, investment, and financial trust, for example, consumers will shift to financial vendors who provide superior and secure services, experienced today whereby consumers are now preferring bitcoin technology since its more secure and cost-effective

Cybercrimes such as the use of stolen IP addresses, access to confidential financial information, manipulation of monetary information, and security mitigation cost have stood as some of the most devastating effects of cyber threats. Exposure of such information have caused financial sectors to incur the huge cost associated with federal laws, cost incurred to pay the clients, have lost reputation, even obligating other businesses to close out of the blue. Consider the case of JP Morgan a financial company that incurred a loss of over $ 100 million.

III. Impact of cybercrimes on laws and regulations in the United States

As the landscape of cybercrime increases, the US government is continuing to strengthen the existing laws to broaden the legislation process. According to Jay (2016) other researcher tries to examine whether the augmentation of cybercrime has affected the operation of the United States government and to what degree. Of course, as cyber threats increase the United States government is mandated to add more laws, departments such as forensics to analyze new cyber threats and develop relevant countermeasures. Also, the government is prompted to conduct periodic meetings to review and update laws affecting cybersecurity. For example in 2015, the government developed the Cybersecurity Act that mandated the organization to share any type of threats that would probably explore an information system.

Due to cybercrimes, the government was mandated to change the federal cybercrime laws in 1984, which affects all US citizens. For example, in 1984, the government passed a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The new CFAA prohibited any user or organization from obtaining information directly related or national security, prohibit user to access a computer to defraud value, just to mention a few.

From a larger perspective, cybercrimes have mandated the European Union composed of United States, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific, to adapt new NIS directives, fronted to improve security on information security, and encouraging the members to integrate supplementary steps such as having a computer security incident team (CSRIT) to curb the internet menace( Mendoza, 2017).

A legal framework.

Privacy and data security are encapsulated by laws at federal and state governments that conjoin to a legal framework that protects personal information. The patchwork is promulgated at the industry and state level since the US constitution lacks a patchwork for federal data protection laws. The underlying question is, who follows under the legislative framework, and what type of information is protected under the legal framework?

Since the United States constitution lacks an all-inclusive federal data protection policy, the applicability of the legal frameworks differs on both state and federal levels. At the federal level the framework obligates to maintain the scope and applicability of the laws by the industrial sector. By the same token, at the state level, the protection laws apply to the enterprises that manage specific information regarding residents residing at the state meaning that a business is subjected to state laws if it maintains information regarding a citizen residing in a particular state though the business is not instituted at that particular state.

There does not exist a valid definition of “personal information” across state and federal regimes. From a general viewpoint, personal information can stand as data that alone can easily track or trace to an exact person. Examples of such data include a person’s name, i.e., first and last name, bank details, and social security numbers. From a law perspective, for example considering the state notification laws, personally identifiable information (PII) can be depicted as a person’s name combined with other information such as driver’s license information, billing records, place of education, etc.

According to S-Pl, the agency responsible for setting laws in the finance sector, personal information can be any type of information provided by the clients to obtain a financial service or product. The laws also cuts across results obtained by the financial agency as a result of a financial transaction and information about a consumer obtained indirectly but connects to service or products information. For example, when a company outsources to a third and user information is accessed remotely.

I. The Gramm-Leach Biley Act (GLBA)

GLBA also is known as the Financial Modernization Act established in 1999 is a law under the US federal law that requires the financial sector to provide consent of how they share and protect consumers’ information. According to Groot (2019) for an organization to be GLBA compliant the sector has to satisfy a series of conditions such as notify their clients how they share personal information, inform the consumers their rights when it comes to usage and storage of their data. For example, provide the customers with an opportunity to opt-out if they feel that their data is been misused. Finally, the company has to protect users at all costs, per the security plan developed by the enterprise and relevant government laws.

From a legal perspective, GLBA has benefited consumers in protecting their information, therefore, reduces the vulnerability of cybercrimes. Companies complying with the GLBA rules are at a inferior risk of possible penalties and also loss of reputation associated with loss of consumers’ data. According to the act, all financial institution found accountable of non-compliance face a penalty of $100 000 for each violation. Individual found to violate the act faces a fine of $10000 for each violation and can be termed to jail imprisonment of up to 5 yrs.

To create trust, reliability, and curb cybersecurity, the financial institution is required to:

· Protect all privacy information against any unsanctioned access.

· The financial institutions are required to notify the consumers of any data sharing with third parties and can opt-out from the sharing process.

· Are mandated to track user activities, for example, a user trying to access protected records.

· Financial institutions are required to assess the degree of clients’ data sensitivity and compare to control measures in place as a measure of evaluating the level of system competency.

· Financial institutions are required to implement a security program and test it.

· In the case of outsourcing, the institution is required to select service providers who are suitable to safeguard both corporate and clients’ data.

II. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (2019), the HIPAA act of 1996 is a law under the federal regime that highlights standards and policy to all health sectors protecting sensitive patients’ information from been shared with external sources without the patients' consent and mandating the health sector to protect patients’ information? In the past decade, the health sector has experienced the largest data breaches in the United States accounting for at least 42.7% of all data breaches in the United States. The major goal of the privacy rule was to protect health information while data flows across the health sectors to warrant provision of better medical care. For example, a research center such as CDC can request access to particular medical information as a strategy of developing a new drug, therefore the sector has to share health data in a stratagem that does affect the patients.

Examples of individuals covered by the privacy rule include health providers, despite the health practice or the size of the entity as long as they are directly involved in the electronic transmission of health data. Health plans, including entities that either provide medical care services or pay for medical care services. For example, insurers providing a dental petition, or prescription of a drug. Church-sponsored and employer-sponsored groups are part of health plans. The healthcare clearinghouses depicting those individuals who receive identifiable health information from the health entities to convert or process such data into manageable or understandable formats. Such individuals include data analysts. Finally, business associate. These are individuals or sectors utilizing and disclosing health identifiable information to satisfy particular functionality, for example, research centers.

The department of Health and Human Services (2013), documents that covered entities are permitted but restricted to disclose user information without the consent and authorization of the individual for status quo such as:

· Exposure of personal details whereby if the information is to be recycled for other purposes the entity must obtain a disclosure from the individual or scrap data that can directly locate back the individual.

· Disclose information regarding payment methods, treatment activities, or health operations such as providing x-ray scans.

· Under the HIPAA security rules, the entities are required to satisfy the CIA triads (confidentiality, integrity, and accountability) of all health data transmitted electronically.

· Required to detect possible threats that could make personal health information vulnerable to attack

· Are required to periodically certify compliance.

III. Other significant acts (“Federal Trade Commission, Electronic Communications Privacy Act”)

The Federal Trade Commission enforces the Trade Act prohibits unfair acts when it comes to conducting trade. Such unfair acts cut across electronic activities that expose parties’ data privacy or exploits the security content of the users. As part of their responsibilities, the act collects and investigates companies that break laws in trade and also educates the consumers on their rights when it comes to providing consent of their information.

On the other hand, the electronic communication privacy act (ECPA), was initially developed to prevent the government from accessing information from private communications. For example, the government tapping a user’s communication without the users' consent. The act covers interception of communication in realms of private organizations wiretapping and eavesdropping through an electronic device or organizations and users possessing information devices that wiretaps user data and protects disclosure of private information obtained unlawfully from the unsanctioned interception.

Combating Cybercrime

At present-day devices have become connected than ever before and it’s projected to increase as more and better devices are been developed every minute. Nonetheless, even after developing an innovative paradigm, the connections have amplified the risk of fraud attack and more so cybercrimes. Though the Department of Homeland Security is working with the federal and state government to combat cybercrimes, users and companies can assimilate various measures to protect themselves against cybercrimes. ‘

I. Assimilating tight security measures

A constricted security measure can be achieved by either using a robust password or a multifactor authentication strategy. When developing passwords it’s advisable to create a password with a combination of letters, special characters, and numeric. Also, statistics have shown that most of the US population uses a similar password in multiple platforms, for example, the social media password is alike to the email password. According to Johnson (2019), users should use dissimilar passwords to reduce the severity of the attack in case a data breach occurs.

Multifactor authentication enables the user to verify their credential more than one time, for example, a user may use a password and a secret code sent to the personal device.

II. Updating the operating system.

The user is supposed to update the operating systems when they receive the notification. First and foremost, the user is supposed to verify the legitimacy of the vendor. System updates assist the existing system to keep an update of recently introduced malware. Also, the system is much stable when it comes to mitigating malware. Since an enterprise infrastructure maybe is large, enterprises can update their hardware and software periodically.

III. Training and awareness.

The first step in mitigating cyber threats is awareness. It’s the responsibility of the enterprise to create consciousness on possible malware attacks and train them on possible ways to mitigate the cyber-attacks. For example, training the workers the type of email to avoid so that they can be able to differentiate between spasm emails and corporate emails. Likewise train the employees on possible ways to create a strong password, etc.

IV. Encryption and backing up data

According to Popat (2018), a cybercrime prevention policy should comprise two events, a protection criteria’s and a recovery mechanism. Organizations can always achieve the protection latter by securing their activities, for example, encrypt corporate data, internet connections, either internal or remote, and communications with stakeholders. After encryption, the organization should back up the data. Even after a data breach, an organization can easily recover from the incidents if it had a backup drive.

Other protection criteria’s include, securing the corporate hardware from logical and physical access, investing in cyber insurances, seeking advice from an external expert, such as security auditors, developing a workplace that assimilates a security-focused culture, and users should avoid public network, for example, wireless fidelity offered on parks or restaurants for free.

The future of cybercrimes and change in cyber law landscape

As more and more devices are becoming connected to the internet and each other it is becoming difficult to monitor all the devices at runtime. Furthermore, most of the businesses in the United States and the world, in general, are shifting to new technologies such as cloud computing, cryptography, machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data, just to mention a few. Businesses are now left to answer the question what’s next? What’s next for cybercrimes, or what measures are organizations assimilating spearheaded to combat cybercrimes activities in the future? Following a report produced by Poremba (2019) showing a survey conducted by Juniper Researcher, it projected that by 2024, organizations will have incurred a cost of $4 trillion in terms of data breaches.

Again it’s imperative to look at the standing position of the United States government in combatting future cybercrimes, i.e., what measures is the government undertaking to combat cybercrimes in the next century. Due to the growing rate of cybercrimes the law enforcement is mandated to keep up the pace. To keep up with the law perspectives the government needs more skilled forensic engineers, up to date prosecutors, and a familiarity with new cybercrime threats. States such as California have been able to keep up with the pace by assimilating a multiagency task force. Likewise, the government is developing more computer crime central such as those located in South Carolina (Wolf, 2009).

Conclusion

No account centering on cyber-crimes would be comprehensive without a look at cybercrimes in the US and its legal perspectives. It’s only impartial to conclude that even though the federal and state government have assimilated superior measures such as periodic updating of the laws, and setting up more aggressive laws policies, technology has overwhelmed the legal perceptive in the United States. The ever-changing landscape of technology has laid out a robust background for cybercriminals to execute unlawful activities, through techniques such as anonymity and attributions. Likewise, malware is changing their structures endlessly therefore it has become difficult for the government to curb cybercrimes as a whole. Though cybercrimes have proven to be complex, consumers can begin the race towards combating the threats by blending in superior techniques such as the creation of strong passwords and creating awareness. It's unpredictable what the future of law entails in the United States due to the existence of a dynamic technology but citizens can conform to superior approaches that will at large mitigate the cyber threats.

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