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178 Part One Organizations, Management, and the Networked Enterprise

telephone, electrical, radio, television, or other public utility technologies. The
absence of standards and the criticality of some system applications will proba-
bly call forth demands for national standards and perhaps regulatory oversight.

Computer Crime and Abuse
New technologies, including computers, create new opportunities for committing
crime by creating new valuable items to steal, new ways to steal them, and new
ways to harm others. Computer crime is the commission of illegal acts through
the use of a computer or against a computer system. Computers or computer
systems can be the object of the crime ( destroying a company’s computer center
or a company’s computer files), as well as the instrument of a crime (stealing
computer lists by illegally gaining access to a computer system using a home
computer). Simply accessing a computer system without authorization or with
intent to do harm, even by accident, is now a federal crime. How common is
computer crime? One source of information is the Internet Crime Complaint
Center (“IC3”), a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The IC3 data is useful for gauging the types
of e-commerce crimes most likely to be reported by consumers. In 2011, the IC3
processed almost 315,000 Internet crime complaints, the second-highest number
in its 11-year history. Over half the complainants reported a financial loss, with
the total reported amount at almost $500 million. The average amount of loss for
those who reported a financial loss was more than $4,100. The most common
complaints were for scams involving the FBI, identity theft, and advance fee fraud
(National White Collar Crime Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
2012). The Computer Security Institute’s annual Computer Crime and Security
Survey is another source of information. In 2011, the survey was based on the
responses of 351 security practitioners in U.S. corporations, government agencies,
financial institutions, medical institutions, and universities. The survey reported
that 46 percent of responding organizations experienced a computer security inci-
dent within the past year. The most common type of attack experienced was a
malware infection (67%), followed by phishing fraud (39%), laptop and mobile
hardware theft (34%), attacks by botnets (29%), and insider abuse (25%). The true
cost of all computer crime is estimated to be in the billions of dollars.

Although some people enjoy
the convenience of working
at home, the “do anything
anywhere” computing
environment can blur the
traditional boundaries
between work and family
time.

© MBI/Alamy

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