Cybersecurity Ventures predicted that global cybercrime damages would hit $10.5 trillion in 2025, a figure we have been compounding upward from $3 trillion in 2015 and $6 trillion in 2021. The estimate folds in stolen funds, fraud, productivity loss, intellectual property theft, post-attack remediation, regulatory fines, and reputational harm. To put the figure in scale, if cybercrime were measured as a national economy, it would rank as the third largest in the world, behind only the U.S. and China.
The growth curve appears to be slowing as the underground economy matures, and we are now predicting that the total could plateau in the $12.2 trillion range by 2031, implying a more modest 2.5 percent annual increase from 2026 onward. Whether that plateau holds depends largely on how quickly governments, banks, and platforms can disrupt the cross-border infrastructure that ransomware crews, scam compounds, and crypto launderers depend on.
The team at SWIF, an IT management and security provider for more than 20 years, expands on the cost of cybercrime with statistics on ransomware, cryptocrime, and other cybercriminal activity, from credible sources including the FBI, Verizon DBIR, INTERPOL, UK NCSC, and others, to provide a global picture in 2026.
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