According to new research by UK technology comparison website Comparitech victims in the UAE lose $746 million a year to cybercrime.

Victims of cybercrime worldwide lose $318 billion each year, the study found. About 71.1 million people in the world fall victim to cybercrime each year, which equates to nearly 900 victims per 100,000 people, and the average victim’s loss is $4,476 per cybercrime, the Comparitech research revealed.

The company made the calculation based on an analysis of cybercrime reports in 67 countries for which this information was available in either 2018-2019 or 2019-2020.

“Cybercrime is still severely underreported by police and government entities and the true monetary value remains largely unknown,” the study said.

Remote working and rapid digital transformation because of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in an increase in cybercrime globally.

The average global cost of a data breach rose by about 10 per cent a year to $4.2m over the past 12 months, according to IBM.

The countries that experienced the highest losses as a result of cybercrime are the United States ($28bn), Brazil ($26bn), the UK ($17.4bn) and Russia ($15.2bn), according to Comparitech research.

In comparison, the UAE recorded 166,667 victims losing $746m to cybercrime annually, the study said.

The country that experienced the largest increase in cybercrime was Sri Lanka, with a 359 per cent year-on-year increase from 2019 to 2020 (3,566 to 16,376 reports). Most (15,895) of these reports related to social media crimes, probably caused by the increased use of these platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic.