By Ephraim Agbo
The invisible economy that can topple firms
Cybercrime has stopped being a niche headline and become a core business risk. Attacks are larger, faster and smarter; criminals operate like service businesses, rent malware and target people rather than just systems. The result: measured direct losses understate the true damage, which ripples through supply chains, employment and public services. Governments and industry are increasingly sounding the alarm — and for good reason. The number of cyberattacks has nearly doubled since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the risk of extreme (company-crippling) losses is rising.
Pull quote: “Attackers now exploit trust, not just code—the weakest link is human process, not technology.”
What the numbers mean — and why they undercount the harm
Three headline figures frame the crisis:
- The chance of extremely large losses has increased markedly; the number of attacks has almost doubled since the pandemic began. A handful of catastrophic breaches can cause outsized economic damage.
- Private research groups place the global annual cost of cybercrime in the trillions; some forecasts put the figure near $10.5 trillion by 2025 when lost output, containment costs, reputational damage and systemic spillovers are included.
- Generative AI is reshaping fraud economics: AI-enabled fraud losses in the U.S. could rise from roughly $12 billion (2023) to $40 billion by 2027 under aggressive adoption scenarios. AI lets attackers scale personalization, automate reconnaissance, and produce convincing deepfakes at low cost.
These numbers are scaffolding: reported ransom payments and incident notifications are the tip of a much larger iceberg that includes silent losses, brand erosion and the human cost of shuttered businesses.
The changing anatomy of attacks — people first, then systems
Early cyber intrusions exploited code and misconfigured servers. Today’s most damaging campaigns combine technical tooling with human-led social engineering. Threat actors probe vendor relationships, co-opt help-desk workflows, or impersonate executives to bypass even strong technical controls.
A stark example is the group known as Scattered Spider. Security agencies report this network focuses on tricking IT help-desk staff to register new devices or approve multi-factor prompts, then moves laterally to steal data and extort victims. These methods intentionally exploit human process failures rather than just software bugs.
Put simply: the weakest link in most corporate defenses is the identity lifecycle — contractors, help desks, service accounts and emergency overrides. Attackers exploit trust.
Pull quote: “A single compromised help-desk workflow can cascade across multiple vendors, airlines or retailers—one entry point, huge consequences.”
AI and deepfakes: the new force multiplier
Generative AI has reduced the marginal cost of sophisticated fraud. With access to scraped profiles and inexpensive models, criminals can:
- Produce highly personalised phishing at scale.
- Craft voice-cloned calls and video deepfakes that convincingly impersonate executives.
- Auto-generate exploit code and tailor attacks faster than defenders can respond.
This matters for two reasons. First, AI increases both the volume and quality of attacks—more convincing lures mean higher success rates. Second, it complicates detection: classic pattern-matching flags for poor grammar and generic phrasing are less effective against AI-polished content.
The projection of AI-enabled fraud losses rising sharply in the coming years illustrates how quickly this threat can scale unless defenders adopt equally powerful automation and detection approaches.
Critical incidents that shifted perception: Colonial Pipeline and beyond
Some incidents converted abstract risk into immediate policy action. The May 2021 Colonial Pipeline attack forced a shutdown of a major U.S. fuel pipeline, triggering shortages and rapid government response. The event showed how ransomware against critical infrastructure can cause cascading, real-world harm far beyond an IT outage.
Since then, attackers have broadened their focus: major airlines, large retailers, financial services and healthcare have all reported high-impact breaches. These sectors are attractive because their operations are interconnected, rely on third-party providers, and often tolerate short downtimes—until a crisis reveals otherwise.
Ransomware-as-a-service and professionalisation of crime
Modern ransomware is often offered as a product: RaaS (ransomware-as-a-service) packages let less technical criminals launch high-impact campaigns. Groups test techniques in regions with lower law-enforcement risk, refine playbooks, and then pivot into wealthier markets. This industrialisation increases volume, reduces barriers to entry, and shortens attackers’ learning cycles—while defenders scramble to scale protections.
What boards and executives must do — a practical, prioritized playbook
Cybersecurity is a strategic governance issue, not a checkbox. Here’s an actionable playbook for leaders who want to make their organisations resilient:
- Treat cyber as a systemic business risk. Elevate cyber risk on the board agenda, link it to operational resilience and financial planning, and require third-party assurance for critical vendors.
- Lock down identity and help-desk procedures. Harden call-centre and service-desk authentication: require multi-step verification, strict device-enrolment processes, and time-limited escalation windows. Include social-engineering tests in routine readiness checks.
- Invest in defensive AI and detection automation. Use tooling that flags synthetic media, voice anomalies and transactional anomalies. Defensive automation must run at the speed attackers use or more.
- Strengthen supply-chain guarantees. Contracts must mandate security baselines, testing windows and incident-notification SLAs so a single compromised vendor can’t cascade across a sector.
- Plan for the catastrophic. Run live tabletop exercises that include deepfake-enabled social engineering and multi-vector ransomware scenarios. Align insurance to incentivise strong controls.
- Mandate transparent reporting. Standardised breach reporting improves collective detection and helps calibrate systemic risk policy.
Pull quote: “Defensive AI, stronger vendor controls and human-centred processes are not optional—these are strategic survival tools.”
Quick technical checklist for security teams
- Enforce hardware-backed MFA for privileged accounts.
- Run quarterly phishing and social-engineering simulations that include voice and video deepfake vectors.
- Monitor continuously for credential leakage and exposed databases.
- Segment networks and maintain immutable, off-site backups.
- Enforce least privilege for service accounts and vendor access.
- Review cyber-insurance for moral hazard and remediation requirements.
The policy angle: why governments must act faster
Because cyber incidents can cascade into real economic shocks, governments increasingly treat cyber risk as part of financial stability and critical-infrastructure regulation. National agencies recommend stronger incident reporting, mandatory cyber hygiene for critical providers, and incentives for private-public threat intelligence sharing. Without regulatory baselines, the weakest providers remain attack vectors for the whole economy.
Final analysis — act now, or pay later
We are in an arms race. Attackers are professionalising and adopting AI; defenders must do the same. The cost of inaction is measured not only in ransom payments but in lost businesses, disrupted services and social harm. For executives, cybersecurity is a strategic imperative: protect customers, secure operations, and build resilience against systemic shocks.
If your organisation needs practical next steps, begin with a board briefing that quantifies exposure, a vendor-risk triage for top third-party relationships, and immediate hardening of help-desk identity controls. Those three moves lower immediate risk and buy time to invest in defensive automation.
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