Computer Crimes

Computer crimes are crimes that involve attacking a computer or a network, and Some attacks involve single computers, and others are intended to involve thousands of computers and networks. Moreover, cyberattacks have greatly increased recently as companies have amplified their Internet connectivity. Cyberattacks can take many shapes, many involve data breaches such as the loss of financial data of individuals, like credit or debit card data. Cyber threats can be unintentional or intentional. Unintentional threats are caused by human error e.g. poorly designed systems, environmental hazards like natural disasters, and finally computer systems failure such as poor maintenance. While intentional cyber threats include hacking, phishing, crimeware distributed denial of Service (DDoS) insider and privilege misuse, and physical theft (Pollard, Turban, Wood, 2018).

     Alhayat hospital is a privet hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and it has been affected by a cyber-attack. The malware called ‘WannaCry’, and it was a ransomware designed to block access to a computer system until a certain amount of money has been paid. The malware spreads through computer networks all over the globe within 4 days invading 116 countries. Exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Window’s operating system, it allowed hackers to encode organizations' files, and Alhayat's employees were sent a message demanding $300 (£228) worth of Bitcoins in exchange for the decryption key (Mohurle, & Patil, 2017).  

    Similarly, ransomware attacks are considered by security experts as a higher rate of success versus other cyberattacks activity that has become more difficult, possibly because of the centralization of data resources in an organization. Alhayat's managers best way to ensure avoidance of such ransomware is to have offline or segregated backups of data. Furthermore, they have to possess deeper knowledge of cyberattacks and combine it with business context, valuation techniques, and financial quantification to establish the true costs of their losses as well as being more effective in controlling cyber risk and improving their ability to recover from a cyberattack (Brewer, 2016).

References

Brewer, R. (2016). Ransomware attacks: detection, prevention and cure. Network Security, 2016(9), 5-9.‏

Mohurle, S., & Patil, M. (2017). A brief study of wannacry threat: Ransomware attack 2017. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, 8(5).‏

Pollard, C., Turban, E., Wood, G. (2018). Information technology for management: On-demand strategies for performance, growth, and sustainability (11th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN: 9781118890790