International cybercrime and Namibia’s national security

Abstract

Cybercrimes are becoming progressively universal and sophisticated and have more grave economic impacts than most conventional crimes. Cybercrime is made structurally different from conventional crime by the nature of its technological and skill-intensiveness, its worldwide coverage, and its inventiveness. The effect of cybercrime on society is being debated internationally, regionally and also nationally. The international community is taking measures such as reviewing of laws and creating task forces so as to mitigate its effect but, it seems that changes in laws are not made fast enough as the interlinked incidents of cybercrime makes it hard to trace offenders who use the third countries to commit crime. However, the fact remains that there is a disproportion between the internet usage which is increasing regularly and security control mechanism is lacking behind. Subsequently, this phenomenon is motivated by the sophisticated and self-sufficient digital underground economy in which data is the illicit commodity and has a monetary value. Nevertheless, this study examines the extent to which cybercrime is affecting the society and put forward recommendations on how to better treat cybercrime incidents through introducing instruments such as; right policy and legal framework, well trained and equipped law enforcement organisations, with a support of modern infrastructure and high tech monitoring equipment, along with a well-coordinated inter and intra-agency cooperation at different levels, both locally and internationally. Above all, citizen‟s awareness is essential for this campaign to succeed.