Perspectives on transatlantic cooperation: Transatlantic cyber-insecurity and cybercrime – Economic impact and future prospects

Please note: Each EPRS Study is assigned a DOI (digital object identifier), which is a safe and long term way of ensuring a hyperlink to the full text of this report. However, when ESO creates this record, on occasion the DOI still has not been activated by the EU Bookshop. If you find the source url hyperlink does not work please use the alternative location hyperlink listed as a related url.Over the past two decades, an ‘open’ internet and the spread of digital technologies have brought great economic benefits on both sides of the Atlantic. At the same time, the spread of insecure digital technologies has also enabled costly new forms of crime, and created systemic risks to transatlantic and national critical infrastructure, threatening economic growth and development.

The transnational nature of these phenomena make it very difficult for effective policy solutions to be implemented unilaterally by any one jurisdiction. Cooperation between stakeholders in both the EU and US is required in the development and implementation of policies to increase the security of digital technologies and increase societal resilience to the cybersecurity risks associated with critical infrastructure. Although there is a great deal of congruence between the stated policy goals in both the EU and US, obstacles to effective cooperation impede effective transatlantic policy development and implementation in some areas.

This study examines the scale of economic and societal benefits, costs, and losses associated with digital technologies. It provides an overview of the key cybercrime, cybersecurity and cyber-resilience issues that policy-makers on either side of the Atlantic could work together on, and explains where effective cooperation is sometimes impeded.

European Parliament: European Parliamentary Research Service: Study, December 2017: Perspectives on transatlantic cooperation: Transatlantic cyber-insecurity and cybercrime - Economic impact and future prospects http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/603948/EPRS_STU(2017)603948_EN.pdf

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