IT Security Standards address the design and implementation of cybersecurity systems to protect personal information with a product that is resistant to the many network-based threats to our data. According to research on the emotional impact of cybercrime, this not only protects our devices and the information we have stored on them, but also our psychological and emotional status.
Many cyber-attacks target businesses and large corporations to get the financial and person information of large sums of people through a single data breach. In 2018, there were 1244 data breaches, with 43% involving small businesses as victims. In addition, individuals fall victim to a variety of internet scammers every year, and tens of millions of dollars are lost annually to romance scammers targeting people on internet dating sites, auto scammers asking victims to pay for cars that don’t exist, real estate scammers, and fraudulent FBI scammers. According to a survey taken by Symantec, the Norton Security Company, people have identified their top emotions after falling prey to a cybercrime as angry, annoyed, cheated, upset, and frustrated, among other associated terms that are expected in the aftermath of such an event.
However, this survey also indicated that in response to a cyber-attack, individuals are not very likely to reach out to the organizations or people who are capable of doing something about it, with less than half (44 percent) of victims contacting their financial institutions or the police. Their immobility in pursuing the proper channels to deal with their incidents is related to their understanding that little can be done, and this feeling of hopelessness is not unique to those who have actually been cyber-attacked. Only 3 percent of people do not believe that a cybercrime will happen to them, revealing that a staggering majority of the computer-using population feels that they will eventually be impacted by some online threat.
This means that whenever someone turns on a computer to access the internet, he or she is putting him or herself at risk, and likely believes that nothing can be done once that risk becomes reality, despite the psychological toll it can cost.
The reaction that people have to cyber-attacks and the potential for cybercrime might derive from their lack of understanding of these threats and their origin. To many, these attacks are phantom, and they could be coming from any person in any place in the world. The world dominated by the internet has made it so that we need to protect things in a manner differently than we are used to. A simple lock and key doesn’t quite do it anymore. Properly executed IT Security systems successfully replace the measures we take in the real world to protect ourselves and can give our minds comfort not unlike the protection and assurance we get from a securely locked door.
