The most common types of cybercrime today include hacking, ransomware, phishing and spear-phishing campaigns, exploitation of software vulnerabilities, identity theft, and malware.
Cybercrime is a rapidly growing form of criminal activity that involves the use of computers and the internet to commit illegal acts. This page provides an overview of cybercrime, its different forms, and how to protect yourself from becoming a victim.
The constant evolution of cybercrime
As long as organizations have operated online, cybercrime has plagued IT security teams. As the internet and digital infrastructure evolve, attackers are continually changing their methods and techniques to take advantage of new weaknesses in organizations’ technology and security posture.
The volume and sophistication of cybercrime continues to grow every year, as does the cost of remediating a successful attack. To protect competitiveness and profitability, your business needs solutions that can effectively keep pace with evolving cybersecurity threats and changing business requirements.
Akamai can help. As the world’s most distributed computing platform — from cloud to edge — we understand the internet and how you use it to drive your business forward. Our unparalleled functionality and scale enable us to more easily discern how attackers identify and leverage vulnerabilities across your infrastructure. Our comprehensive portfolio of security solutions provides threat protection for all aspects of your internet-facing infrastructure against the growing volume of cybercrime.
Akamai Security Operations Command Center (SOCC)
The latest types of cybercrime
Your security programs, solutions, and technologies must defend against many types of cybercrime directed at every aspect of your IT ecosystem.
- Modern distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are constantly setting new records for size and complexity of cyberattacks. Ongoing innovation in the DDoS threat landscape creates constant risks as well as enormous challenges in defending against this rapidly shifting attack vector.
- Web applications and APIs are subject to a wide range of cyberthreats — from automated botnets, injections, and API abuse to volumetric DDoS campaigns, zero-day attacks, and web app business logic attacks. Securing these digital properties is complicated by cloud migration, modern DevOps practices, and apps and APIs that are constantly evolving.
- Stolen employee credentials and brute-force logins play a role in nearly 80% of data breaches today. Compromised user credentials and poor password hygiene can result in account takeover that permits attackers to gain illegitimate access to systems, then move laterally to discover and exfiltrate data.
- Ransomware attacks have morphed into an attack vector of epic proportions. Cybercriminals and nation-state hackers use ransomware to penetrate and cripple federal governments, global infrastructure, healthcare organizations, and large enterprises.
Additionally, the changing nature of the workforce is adding more complexity to attempts to combat cybercrime. In the rapid shift to remote work, legacy network security tools designed to create a secure perimeter can no longer keep pace with today’s need for secure access. With employees, third parties, partners, and mobile users all needing access to IT resources, organizations face big challenges in securing access for the right user to the right application at the right time.
Akamai: An easier way to fight cybercrime
While Akamai was founded to deliver better online experiences for users, we’ve evolved into a leading provider of security solutions to monitor, prevent, and mitigate cybercrime. Our comprehensive platform provides in-depth defenses that address the biggest threats to our customers’ digital ecosystems.
Customers see Akamai as a strategic partner in information security. This is due in part to the strength and breadth of our portfolio. It’s also because of the depth of our security expertise, the breadth of our threat intelligence, and the scale of our platform. The Akamai Connected Cloud platform handles more than 5 trillion requests and resolves more than 3 trillion DNS queries each day. This allows us unparalleled, real-time insight into the world’s internet traffic, which enables us to produce best-in-class threat intelligence.
To combat cybercrime, we offer security solutions that deliver:
- Protection and performance. We work tirelessly to enable our customers to provide the best and most secure digital experiences for users, no matter where they are or what devices they’re using.
- Security innovation. From the first cloud-based web application firewall to the first DDoS protection service, we have a history of innovative solutions that have protected customers from some of the largest attacks ever launched.
- Continual investment. We are dedicated to making the investments necessary to develop and deploy tools and rules that detect, orchestrate, and mitigate attacks today and in the future.
- The largest, most trusted cloud delivery platform. Akamai Connected Cloud is the choice of the top 10 video streaming services, the top 10 software companies, 16 of the top 20 retail companies, and 16 of the top 20 banks.
Comprehensive security solutions
Our portfolio of security solutions is designed to stop cybercrime — without slowing down your business.
- App and API security. Akamai App & API Protector protects web applications and APIs with defenses that are tailored to the latest applications and threats, including injection and zero-day attacks. Akamai Edge DNS prevents DNS outages and delivers nonstop DNS availability with a 100% uptime SLA. Akamai Client-side Protection & Compliance roots out insidious, hidden client-side threats by revealing malicious code and vulnerability blind spots.
- Account takeover protection. Akamai Account Protector fights account takeover, captcha farms, and other types of fraud by understanding typical user behavior and identifying the anomalies that can uncover imposters. Akamai Identity Cloud enables seamless and secure customer experiences by reducing friction every time your customers register, authenticate, or sign in. Akamai Bot Manager stops the most dangerous, evasive bots before they erode customer trust.
- DDoS protection. Akamai Prolexic offers high-capacity protection against the largest DDoS attacks, proactively reducing your attack surface by stopping attacks instantly with a zero-second SLA.
- Managed Security Service (MSS) provides access to experienced security analysts and proven cyberspace defenses to help achieve a stronger security posture. Our fully managed security solution integrates proactive monitoring, advisory reporting, threat detection, fast incident response, periodic tuning, and dedicated security experts in a service with the scale to protect your organization against the largest, most sophisticated cyber incidents and the latest attack vectors.
- Microsegmentation. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is a software-based segmentation solution that enforces Zero Trust principles and reduces overall risk by preventing unauthorized lateral movement inside the network.
- Threat intelligence and research. Akamai Hunt is a managed threat hunting service that finds and remediates the most evasive security risks in your environment. It is led by security experts from Akamai’s threat intelligence and analytics teams — and utilizes the data gathered from Akamai Guardicore Segmentation — to search for threats in your network, find and virtually patch vulnerabilities, and harden your infrastructure.
- Zero Trust security. Enterprise Application Access makes it easy to provide your remote workforce with fast, secure Zero Trust Network Access. Akamai MFA prevents employee account takeovers and data breaches with convenient, phish-proof FIDO2-based multi-factor authentication. Akamai Secure Internet Access enables remote users and devices to safely connect to the internet through an easy-to-deploy cloud-based secure web gateway.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Cybercrime is criminal activity that is typically targeted at an organization’s IT network, computers, devices, and other IT assets.
Cybercrime is typically conducted to steal money, sensitive information, or intellectual property; to disrupt business operations; or to damage an organization’s reputation.
SOC stands for security operations center. It is a centralized security team, responsible for monitoring and responding to security incidents within an organization. The SOC monitors the IT infrastructure, systems, and networks for security threats and vulnerabilities.
Zero Trust security is an IT security framework that emphasizes the importance of verifying, authenticating, and authorizing every attempt to access corporate data and resources, regardless of whether the user is accessing them from inside or outside of the corporate network. This framework is based on the principle that no user should be trusted by default, regardless of their physical location or status. It also requires that identity, authentication, and authorization are continually verified and validated.
Why customers choose Akamai
Akamai powers and protects life online. Leading companies worldwide choose Akamai to build, deliver, and secure their digital experiences — helping billions of people live, work, and play every day. Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud platform, puts apps and experiences closer to users and keeps threats farther away.