Legal Aspects of Cybersecurity Artur Appazov

6.5
 
Incident Reporting and Information Sharing 
Because of the difficulties arising when trying to define and identify cybercrime, nationally 
and cross-nationally comparative statistics on cybercrime are much rarer than for other 
crime types.
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The measures that might be wanting are those that would improve 
transparency through obliging individual and corporate victims, under certain 
circumstances, disclose data breaches.
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139
Comprehensive Study on Cybercrime 56-58. 2013. 
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Id. at, 60. 
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Id. at, 61. 
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Id. at, 6; C
LOUGH
, Principles of Cybercrime 13-14. 2010. 
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Teplinsky, A
MERICAN 
U
NIVERSITY 
B
USINESS 
L
AW 
R
EVIEW
, 276-278 (2013). 

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Cybercrime acts most frequently come to the attention of law enforcement authorities 
through reports by individual or corporate victims. The UNDOC study provides that 80 per 
cent of individual victims of core cybercrime do not report the crime to the police.
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Underreporting derives from a lack of awareness of victimization and of reporting 
mechanisms, victim shame and embarrassment, and perceived reputation risks for 
corporations. It is important to highlight initiatives for increasing reporting, including 
online and hotline reporting systems, public awareness campaigns, private sector liaison, 
and enhanced police outreach and information sharing. An incident-driven response to 
cybercrime accompanied by medium and long-term tactical investigations can successfully 
identify the crime markets and criminal scheme architects, which means a better 
understanding of the area in need of regulation.
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Until the law enforcement has a cumulative picture of victims of cybercrime and their 
offenders, confusion will remain as to who they are (whether they are physical persons or 
corporation or governments), the manner of their victimization, and the amount of policing 
resources that should be allocated to the problem. The inability to construct the offender 
profile leads to inability to isolate offender motivation for the purposes of criminalization, 
for example.
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Reliable information about cybercrime informs policy, practice, and the 
public. It helps to prevent information sources from over-representing their own interest 
and it reconciles the needs of the state and interests of other stake-holders, rather than 
dividing them. Reliable information helps shape public expectations more realistically.
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