Essay on Computer Virus and Effects on Economy

Malware and viruses have profound impacts on the economy, especially when targeting major industries. For instance, cyber-attacks can destroy the entire economy, an example being the Wikileaks attacks of 2011 that highlighted the impacts of malicious activities on both the consumers and businesses. In this regard, computer viruses affect the economy when companies have to incur costs in repairing the damages and as such, suffering from massive revenue loss. In this case, computer viruses plunge the economy into great losses, especially the confidence of investors, lost in revenue, and the cost incurred in recovering from the damage.

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One of the major negative impacts of computer virus is that in most of the cyber-attacks large organizations, the attackers go for the finances of the companies. In retrospect, malicious software like ransomware is being directed to the information systems. Ransomware has the possibility of encrypting the hard drives of the machines and from this, demanding payment (Pathak & Nanded, 2016). In this case, significant financial losses occur to the company, and if it escalates to global levels, the economy experiences shocks. Banks have been the primary targets of these types of attacks of which the cyber criminals target financial data. Some of the attacks target crucial and confidential information of customers, and from this, individuals suffer significant financial loss. In this case, the financial loss is brought to the company and customers thereby indicating the economic implications of computer viruses. When the economy is affected, the overall GDP experiences a downward trend since the productivity level of the economy is tampered with of which greater escalation of the attacks means more and severe harm to the economy.

Nonetheless, viruses lead to significant disruptions in the infrastructure. One of the areas that are increasingly becoming the target of computer viruses and cyber-attacks is the internet of things, or the gadgets and home appliances like Television sets, music systems, meter readers and other devices connected to the web (Jing, Vasilakos, Wan, Lu & Qiu, 2014). Through these gadgets, cyber-attackers have been able to hack into public infrastructure. For instance, through the internet-enabled meter readers, the hackers can get into the grid system and cause a major blackout. The power outage will mean that there will be the disruption of normal business operations and this can lead to significant losses to the economy. To some extent, attacks from computer viruses lead to the business world investing on defense as well as the government putting incentives for safeguarding the security of the economy. Investment in defense and security management leads to improved economy and GDP because investors will be targeting the security sector (for safeguarding the security systems) against possible attacks from computer viruses. However, in the real sense, computer viruses drive investors away because of the fear of losing investment to cyber-attacks.

Therefore, computer viruses expose the economy to financial losses, especially revenue, important information, the confidence of the investors thereby plunging the entire economy into a meltdown.

References

Jing, Q., Vasilakos, A. V., Wan, J., Lu, J., & Qiu, D. (2014). Security of the Internet of Things: perspectives and challenges. Wireless Networks, 20(8), 2481-2501.

Pathak, P. B., & Nanded, Y. M. (2016). A dangerous trend of cybercrime: Ransomware growing challenge. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering & Technology (IJARCET), 5(2), 1.