The prosecution gap: Why cybercrimes go unpunished | TechTarget
Cybercrime activity is rapidly escalating as attackers continue to explore both established and novel methods to defraud victims of their assets. The "FBI Internet Crime Report 2025" logged more than one million cybercrime complaints for the first time in the agency's history, with reported losses reaching $20.87 billion, a 26% year-over-year increase.
Yet the enforcement record against those criminals is thin. The U.S. Sentencing Commission's September 2024 report, "Cyber Technology in Federal Crime," the most current government analysis available, found that between 2014 and 2021, only 2,590 individuals were federally sentenced for offenses involving hacking, cryptocurrency or dark-web activity.
For CISOs and security teams, that gap has direct implications for how risk is modeled and where defensive investment should be allocated.
Why most attacks go unpunished
Attackers are well aware of the scanty rates of prosecution and often use that information to their advantage.
"Much of the decision-making around who...
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