The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has published the cost for cybercrime all over the world. Of course, the numbers were released in billions, because the outfit set their own overestimated value on the costs of “damage to business from the IP theft”. In result, the final cost of hacking totaled to $445 bln. In the meanwhile, a bit more reasonable figure is the estimated $160 bln loss to individuals from hacking.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies claimed that cybercrime was a growing industry which damaged trade, competitiveness and innovation worldwide. The recent study estimated losses at $375 bln up to as much as $575 bln.

The cybercrime study was sponsored by McAfee, a security software company. The latter actually has no interest in causing a panic about the damage done by the hackers. McAfee explained that improved international collaboration is now showing results in reducing cybercrime. As an example, the company mentioned the takedown last week of a crime ring which was responsible for infecting hundreds of thousands of PCs, known in the web by the name of its master software – Gameover Zeus.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies claimed in a statement that cybercrime may represent a tax on innovation, as it actually slows the pace of global innovation by reducing the rate of return to both innovators and investors. The researchers pointed out that for developed countries, cybercrime may have serious implications for employment. The largest economies in the world bore the brunt of the losses, according to the study, with the toll on the US, China, Japan and Germany amounting to $200 bln per year in total. In the meantime, losses connected to personal details, including stolen credit card information, were estimated at the amount of $150 bln.

Around 40 million people in the US (which is roughly 15% of the population) have had personal data stolen by cyber attackers, according to the study. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies revealed that high-profile breaches also affected millions of people worldwide, including 54 million people in Turkey, 16 million in Germany and over 20 million in China.