Say $6 Trillion Again … I DARE you: Examining the roots of a total BS Marketing Number

This article has been indexed from CyberCrime & Doing Time

Would you like to see someone’s head explode? 

Observe what happens when I’m researching a topic and I see a headline like this AVG story which claims “Ransomware is set to cause $6 trillion in damages by 2021.”  Wow.  Makes you want to run right out and buy cybersecurity products, doesn’t it?  Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, the marketing department’s dream formula!

AVG’s Marketing Department can’t help themselves

You really can’t fault the marketing folks at AVG though … every cybersecurity marketing department is jumping on the bandwagon.  And when places like CISO Magazine share the number blindly with no examination of the facts, how can they be blamed?

How much is $6 Trillion?  That would be the GDP of Brazil, Italy, and France lost to cybercrime each year.  That would be the entire GDP of Japan lost to cybercrime each year. 

The source, every time you see this preposterous number the source will be traced to a Cybersecurity Ventures report that was designed to scare people into spending more money on cybersecurity defenses.  I did an analysis of that report back in October 2017 and wanted to walk you through it here, gentle reader, so that you would have a place to point people who quote the Six Trillion Dollar Charlatan.  Here is where things started for me, when I saw this report: