According to a new report coming out of the RSA Conference 2018:
"The $1.5 trillion that cybercriminals generate each year includes $860 billion in illicit online markets, $500B in theft of trade secrets and intellectual property, $160B in data trading, $1.6B in crimeware-as-a-service, and $1B in ransomware. Evidence indicates cybercrime often generates more revenue than legitimate companies: large multi-national operations can earn more than $1B; smaller ones typically make between $30k-$50K."
How do we combat this?
The illicit community will never cease to exist as long as there is a need and there will be a market. Once the market exist, will be target as well. What we can do is to identify the target (Victims) and educate them as much as we can.
Through education and awareness we will close in on this illicit community making it even more difficult to prey on potential targets.