Cybercrime 4.0: Now Whats to be Done?

• In Event: What is to be Done About Crime and Punishment: International Perspectives

Abstract

There has been widespread agreement about the scale of the cybercrime problem - that it represents one of the most serious of all contemporary criminal threats. From the mid 1990s onwards this conclusion has driven significant shifts in legislation, policing powers and policy across most national jurisdictions. But how effective have these been? Perhaps more significantly, do these responses offer any kind of template for dealing with future developments in the cybercrime threat? In this paper I will review the health of our defences against online offending in the light of what may be its latest mutation – an emerging complex of technical opportunity which, for convenience, will be termed ‘Cybercrime 4.0’. I will ask if ‘what worked’ in previous contexts is likely to continue to work, or if this latest shift represents another permutation of the old maxim that ‘crime control is always one step behind the (cyber) criminal’.

Author

• Mike McGuire, University of Surrey, United Kingdom