Cybercrime and Ransomware
Digital crime causes trillions in losses annually and increasingly disrupts hospitals, utilities and government services.
Severity score
52.4
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Ransomware, business email compromise, fraud and state-linked intrusion have grown into one of the largest categories of economic harm in the world. The direct death toll is small but nonzero, as attacks on hospitals have measurably degraded emergency care and patient outcomes. Attacks on critical infrastructure, water treatment and power grids represent a growing tail risk far larger than the current measured impact.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
8Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
86People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
96Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
5Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
85Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.