According to McAfee and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the answer is “Yes.”
In a new report, Net Losses – Estimating the Global Cost of Cybercrime, McAfee and CSIS conclude that cybercrime costs businesses approximately $400 billion worldwide, with an impact on approximately 200,000 jobs in the United States and 150,000 jobs in the EU. The most important cost of cybercrime comes from its damage to company performance and to national economies. Based on CSIS estimates, cybercrime extracts between 15 and 20 percent of the value created by the Internet (which annually generates between $2 trillion and $3 trillion).
Intellectual property can be particularly damaged by cybercrime – high-income countries lost as much as 0.9 percent of GDP on average in intellectual property due to cybercrime.
The report commends partnerships between countries for combating cybercrime, praising public-private partnerships in particular for beginning to show tangible results in terms of fighting cybercrime, such as the partnership of 11 nations to take down a crime ring associated with the GameOver Zeus botnet in June.