Cybercrime To Cost The World $12.2 Trillion Annually By 2031
webThis report quantifies global cybercrime costs, relevant to AI safety as generative AI is cited as a tool enabling more sophisticated cyberattacks, raising concerns about AI-enabled threats to critical infrastructure and economic stability.
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Importance: 22/100organizational reportanalysis
Summary
Cybersecurity Ventures projects global cybercrime costs will reach $10.5 trillion in 2025 and $12.2 trillion annually by 2031, growing at 2.5% per year. The report frames cybercrime as a self-sustaining global economy larger than most nations, driven by nation-state actors and criminal gangs increasingly leveraging generative AI. It highlights the breadth of costs including data theft, fraud, productivity loss, and reputational harm.
Key Points
- •Cybercrime is projected to cost $10.5 trillion globally in 2025, making it the world's third-largest economy after the U.S. and China.
- •Growth is expected to plateau at 2.5% annually through 2031, reaching $12.2 trillion — equivalent to the combined GDPs of Germany, India, and Japan.
- •Generative AI is being exploited by cybercriminals and nation-state actors to refine and scale attacks.
- •Cybercrime costs encompass data destruction, stolen money, intellectual property theft, fraud, legal costs, and regulatory fines.
- •Prosecution remains extremely difficult due to inconsistent international laws, making cybercrime easy to commit and hard to stop.
Cited by 2 pages
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Hacking Costs. PHOTO: Cybercrime Magazine.
28 May Cybercrime To Cost The World $12.2 Trillion Annually By 2031
Posted at 14:49h
in Blogs
by Taylor Fox
Cyber Rica is the world’s third largest economy Press Release
– David Braue , Editor-at-Large
Melbourne, Australia – May 28, 2025
Cybercrime is predicted to cost the world $10.5 trillion USD in 2025 , according to Cybersecurity Ventures. If it were measured as a country, then cybercrime would be the world’s third largest economy after the U.S. and China. This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the damage inflicted from natural disasters in a year, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.
Global cybercriminal activity has grown so large that, after years of rapid expansion, Cybersecurity Ventures believes the sector’s sheer economic weight will see growth plateau at 2.5 percent annually through 2031 , at which point cybercrime will cost the world $12.2 trillion annually.
“Cybercrime costs include damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement, fraud, post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, reputational harm, legal costs, and potentially, regulatory fines, plus other factors” said Steve Morgan , founder of Cybersecurity Ventures.
As nation-state and cybercriminal gangs steal cryptocurrency and tap new technologies like generative AI (GenAI) to refine their attacks, there is only so much money to steal.
That means it’s getting harder for cybercriminal enterprises to continue scaling their takings, with new attack techniques evolving but organizational structures also evolving to protect the sector’s momentum in the face of increasing scrutiny by law enforcement authorities.
Cybercriminals have proved resourceful in adapting to the changing enforcement environment, however: “Based on the inconsistent laws and difficulty in prosecuting, cybercrime unfortunately is easy to commit and very hard, if not impossible, to stop,” said Dr. Eric Cole , a former CIA hacker and founder of cybersecurity consultancy Secure Anchor .
Because it largely relates to financial losses suffered by companies and individuals well outside of our own worldviews, Cole refers to cybercrime as a “silent killer”.
“The problem in cybersecurity is that we’ve never had numbers,” he told Cybercrime Magazine. “It has always been a problem, but it wasn’t visible. By monetizing it, and when you go in to say that it’s a trillion dollar problem, that wakes people up [and they realize] that it is happening.”
Cybercrime Magazine’s annual report will delve into the growth and structure of
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