During the past 40 years, hackers have graduated from worm attacks in the 1980s to fully funded organizations tapping into some of the most lucrative industries in the world. Today, cybercrime is a significant threat to any company with a device attached to the internet and continues to cause substantial economic impact worldwide.
The modern-day cyberattack can trace its roots back to the 1988 Morris worm attack. Before the World Wide Web had made an impact, a small program launched from a computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) propagated remarkably. It infected an estimated 6,000 of the approximately 60,000 computers connected to the internet at the time. Although it was difficult to calculate the exact damage caused by the Morris worm, estimates put it anywhere between US$100,000 and the millions.
Over the…
