IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aox/rcfati/v2y2021i1p50-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exploring the Shift from Physical to Cybercrime at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Miloslava Plachkinova

    (Kennesaw State University, United States)

Abstract

The novel coronavirus has made an impact on virtually every aspect of our lives. The current study utilizes secondary data to identify patterns and trends related to shifting crime from the physical to the cyber domain. With millions, if not billions, people staying at home, attackers now look for new ways to commit crimes. Our findings indicate that while a lot of crimes such as robbery, assault, rape, and murder have declined at the beginning of the pandemic, we are also witnessing a rise in cybercrime, vehicle theft, and domestic violence. The current study looks specifically at phishing and what new trends are observed due to COVID-19. The current work is grounded in routine activity theory and demonstrates its relevance to both the physical and cyberspace. The implications of our work can be used by scholars who want to continue researching this new phenomenon. Practitioners can utilize our findings to look for ways to improve the corporate security posture by protecting the employees and customers working from home. Developing new phishing training and awareness programs should be focused around possible scenarios involving COVID-19. Our study suggests victims are more likely to fall prey to those during times of fear and uncertainty like the current pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Miloslava Plachkinova, 2021. "Exploring the Shift from Physical to Cybercrime at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic," International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations, Concept Tech Publishing, vol. 2(1), pages 50-62.
    • Handle: RePEc:aox:rcfati:v:2:y:2021:i:1:p:50-62
    DOI: 10.46386/ijcfati.v2i1.29
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://conceptechint.net/index.php/CFATI/article/view/29/10
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://conceptechint.net/index.php/CFATI/article/view/29
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.46386/ijcfati.v2i1.29?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Smith, 2009. "Understanding entrepreneurial behaviour in organized criminals," Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 3(3), pages 256-268, August.
    2. Rajagopal, 2014. "The Human Factors," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Architecting Enterprise, chapter 9, pages 225-249, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Jonathan Lusthaus, 2013. "How organised is organised cybercrime?," Global Crime, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 52-60, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jun Zhuo & Mengmeng Hao & Fangyu Ding & Jiping Dong & Dong Jiang & Shuai Chen, 2024. "The spatiotemporal patterns and driving factors of cybercrime in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Elisa Wallwaey & Kerstin Cuhls & Attila Havas, 2022. "The interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 2226, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rahman, Shaikh Moksadur, 2020. "Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intention: Evidence from Bangladesh," Asian Business Review, Asian Business Consortium, vol. 10(2), pages 99-108.
    2. Miao, Lijuan & Sun, Zhanli & Ren, Yanjun & Schierhorn, Florian & Müller, Daniel, 2021. "Grassland greening on the Mongolian Plateau despite higher grazing intensity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 32(2), pages 792-802.
    3. Roberto Cerchione & Emilio Esposito & Maria Rosaria Spadaro, 2015. "The Spread of Knowledge Management in SMEs: A Scenario in Evolution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(8), pages 1-23, July.
    4. Wang Kai, 2019. "Towards a Taxonomy of Idea Generation Techniques," Foundations of Management, Sciendo, vol. 11(1), pages 65-80, January.
    5. Bridgelall, Raj & Stubbing, Edward, 2021. "Forecasting the effects of autonomous vehicles on land use," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    6. Provan, David J. & Woods, David D. & Dekker, Sidney W.A. & Rae, Andrew J., 2020. "Safety II professionals: How resilience engineering can transform safety practice," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    7. Bevilacqua, Maurizio & Ciarapica, Filippo Emanuele, 2018. "Human factor risk management in the process industry: A case study," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 149-159.
    8. Kirathimo Muruga & Tatjana Vasiljeva, 2021. "Physicians' Dual Practice: A Theoretical Approach," Central European Business Review, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2021(5), pages 1-20.
    9. Naveena Prakasam & Louisa Huxtable-Thomas, 2021. "Reddit: Affordances as an Enabler for Shifting Loyalties," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 723-751, June.
    10. Colin Jerolmack & Alexandra K. Murphy, 2019. "The Ethical Dilemmas and Social Scientific Trade-offs of Masking in Ethnography," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 48(4), pages 801-827, November.
    11. Valeriy Makarov & Albert Bakhtizin, 2014. "The Estimation Of The Regions’ Efficiency Of The Russian Federation Including The Intellectual Capital, The Characteristics Of Readiness For Innovation, Level Of Well-Being, And Quality Of Life," Economy of region, Centre for Economic Security, Institute of Economics of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, vol. 1(4), pages 9-30.
    12. Zhao, Jing & Knoop, Victor L. & Wang, Meng, 2020. "Two-dimensional vehicular movement modelling at intersections based on optimal control," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 1-22.
    13. Kristine Edgar Danielyan & Samvel Grigoriy Chailyan, 2019. "Delineation of Effectors Impact on The Human Brain Derived Phosphoribosylpyrophosphate Synthetase-1 Activity," Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research, Biomedical Research Network+, LLC, vol. 24(1), pages 17918-17926, December.
    14. Nguyen Hoang Thuan & Pedro Antunes & David Johnstone, 2016. "Factors influencing the decision to crowdsource: A systematic literature review," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 47-68, February.
    15. Anton Miglo, 2020. "Crowdfunding in a Competitive Environment," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-38, February.
    16. Lizzie Coles-Kemp & Debi Ashenden & Kieron O'Hara, 2018. "Why Should I? Cybersecurity, the Security of the State and the Insecurity of the Citizen," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 6(2), pages 41-48.
    17. Chuan Wang & Yupeng Liu & Wen Hou & Chao Yu & Guorong Wang & Yuyan Zheng, 2021. "Reliability and availability modeling of Subsea Autonomous High Integrity Pressure Protection System with partial stroke test by Dynamic Bayesian," Journal of Risk and Reliability, , vol. 235(2), pages 268-281, April.
    18. Donald Douglas Atsa'am & Ersin Kuset Bodur, 2021. "Pattern Mining on How Organizational Tenure Affects the Psychological Capital of Employees Within the Hospitality and Tourism Industry: Linking Employees' Organizational Tenure With PsyCap," International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Management in the Digital Age (IJTHMDA), IGI Global, vol. 5(2), pages 17-28, July.
    19. Mohammad AL-Zoubi, 2018. "The Role of Technology, Organization, and Environment Factors in Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation Success in Jordan," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(8), pages 48-65, August.
    20. Saif Ullah & Yulin Zhou, 2020. "Gender, Anonymity and Team: What Determines Crowdfunding Success on Kickstarter," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-26, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aox:rcfati:v:2:y:2021:i:1:p:50-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mira Leonko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://conceptechint.net/index.php/CFATI .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.