Inside out: Characterising Cybercrimes Committed Inside and Outside the Workplace

Abstract

This comparison of cybercrime offenders within and outside the workplace reveals they display very different types of offending behaviour, involving different demographics, initiation pathways, and types of offence. The Cambridge Computer Crime Database (CCCD) is a database of open source information about cybercrime arrests and prosecutions in the United Kingdom. This study analyses data from the CCCD spanning nine years, from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2018. Insiders are more likely to be older, and commit less-technical offences, primarily data and system breaches. They are less likely to offend with others, the offences are less likely to be international in nature, and they are less likely to receive a custodial sentence. Most alleged offenders are men, but women are more likely to offend within their occupation than outside the workplace. Of those that offend in the workplace, the largest group consists of police officers or police staff. This is likely to reflect differences in the type of organisations that pursue criminal action against insiders. We draw on a strain theory framework to argue that these findings accord with different kinds of strain and differing reactions to strain. The data for crimes outside the workplace support a 'subcultural' pattern of adaptation to strain, with offenders tending to be younger, male and linked to co-offenders. The findings relating to insiders support an opportunity model of crime, with inter-workplace variation in opportunities, working cultures and sources of strain present in different workplaces. Index Terms-Computer crime, white collar crime, cybercrime, offending in the workplace

White-Collar Cybercrime: Evaluating the Redefinition of a Criminological Artifact

“…Recent research supports the hypothesis that individual employees within organisations commit a majority of what might be termed financial computer crime against their employers, and that this criminal activity usually occurs within the walls of the host company (Gottschalk and Gunnesdal, 2019;Hutchings and Collier, 2019;Nurse et al, 2014;Hagen et al, 2008;Levi, 2008;Nykodym et al, 2005;Dhillon, 2001;Hamin, 2000). Moreover, this would allow a nuanced perspective which redefines white-collar computer crime (latterly cybercrime) to incorporate a consideration and profit-oriented crime, alongside the familiar interpretation of damage-oriented crime, thereby moderating the conventional focus within cyber criminology of disgruntled employees simply wanting to humiliate, sabotage or frustrate their employers.…”

“…However, a decade on from Friedrich"s rallying call the concept remains a rarity within the criminological literature, and no single large-scale work has addressed the subject as a discrete phenomenon. This critical review article aims to contribute towards plugging the theoretical gap, as an addition and compliment to a cluster of thought-provoking recent scholarship that has provided stimulus within the paradigm (Graves et al, 2019;Hutchings and Collier, 2019;Payne, 2018;Isenring et al, 2016). Thus, its rationale is to augment the current literature on cybercrime, by examining the proliferation whilst paying particular focus to its founding category within criminology; the currently under-researched concept of whitecollar computer crime, latterly cybercrime, and subsequently white-collar cybercrime.…”