education. These building blocks provide valuable guidance for governments that are ultimately
responsible for implementing cybersecurity rules and policies.90
Conclusion
Although all of the following matters are addressed in greater depth in the Toolkit, a few
points bear mentioning given this section’s discussion:
Cyberworld is a burgeoning space: In 2016, over 3.488 billion people, roughly forty percent
of the world’s population, used the internet.91 Over sixty percent of all internet users are in
developing countries, with forty-five percent of all internet users below the age of twenty-five
years. By the end of the year 2017, it is estimated that mobile broadband subscriptions will
approach seventy percent of the world’s total population. By 2020, the number of networked
devices (the “internet of things” (IoT)) will outnumber people by six to one, completely
transforming current conceptions of the internet; moreover, interconnectivity will not be
limited to the networking of devices but will also extend to humans, both at the individual and
collective level (the “internet of everything” (IoE)).92 In the hyper-connected world of tomorrow,
it will become hard to imagine a “computer crime”, and perhaps any crime, that does not
involve electronic evidence linked with internet protocol (IP) connectivity. The greatest growth
in the internet in the coming years will be the developing world because that is where the
world’s next billion people will access the internet for the first time.93 It follows from that that
the developing world is also where the greatest need will be to put in place policy and legal
approaches for dealing with cybersecurity and cybercrime.
Defining cybercrime poses difficulties (see section 2 A, below): A limited number of acts
against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data or systems represent the
core of cybercrime. Beyond this, however, computer-related acts for personal or financial gain or
harm, including forms of identity-related crime, and computer content-related acts (all of which
fall within a wider meaning of the term “cybercrime”) do not lend themselves easily to efforts
to arrive at legal definitions of the aggregate term. Certain definitions are required for the core
of cybercrime acts. However, a “definition” of cybercrime is not as relevant for other purposes,
such as defining the scope of specialized investigative and international cooperation powers,
which are better focused on electronic evidence for any crime, rather than a broad, artificial
“cybercrime” construct.
Cybercrime is global and occurs across sectors: Globally, cybercrime is broadly distributed
across financially-driven acts, computer-content related acts, and acts against the confidentiality,
integrity, and accessibility of computer systems. Perceptions of relative risk and threat vary,
however, between governments and private sector enterprises. Currently, crime statistics may
not represent a sound basis for cross-national comparisons, although such statistics are often
important for policy making at the national level.
International legal instruments have done much to spread increase knowledge sharing
(see section 3 A, below): Legal measures play a key role in the prevention and combatting
of cybercrime. These are required in all areas, including criminalization, procedural powers,
Page 25 | Chapter 1 | § B. Phenomenon & Dimensions of Cybercrime
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