In criminal offenses, usually there is a person who commits the crime and the victim, who in most cases, reports said crime. Crimes can be incredibly complicated and convoluted, but if it involves a victim, it mainly boils down to that. Unfortunately, crimes exist beyond the physical plane as well. Digitally, crimes are very abundant, as they take up a large amount of overall crime as a whole and have quite a bit of variety. From phishing, to malware in pop ups and links, to outright hacking, cyber criminals can sneakily, pilfer data, accounts, and even credit card information. In many cases, the victim may not even know that they have been hacked, let alone knowing that their information has been messed with. This itself is actually known as the “dark figure,” where crime is not reported or detected at all. With the introduction of technology, there is a possibility to completely remove any interaction between the perpetrator and the victim, which is very frightening. As people who use devices, it is your responsibility to watch where you input credit card information, check your passwords, and thoroughly read emails claiming to know information about you.

Considering the “short arm” of predictive knowledge, its not a good asset in helping us fend off the threat of cyber attacks. We just straight up cant predict the future, so making predictions for specific instances will not do anything meaningful. Unfortunately, a massive attack can put a massive corporation at a horrible spot in the blink of an eye, so there isn’t many options. The best option is to definitely prepare your security for the absolute worst that could happen. Being prepared for a massive catastrophe allows you to cover that and anything in between. One example of this is when I interned at Dominion energy in Richmond, and each year they would have an event where they pretend to be hacked badly and they must thwart it as a team. Drills like this were updated each year, keeping everyone on their toes and strengthening their teamwork and skills.