Cyber Attacks: Cross-Country Interdependence and Enforcement

This study empirically characterizes the interdependence in cyber attacks and examines the impact from the first international treaty against cybercrimes (Convention on Cybercrimes: Europe Treaty Series No. 185). With the data covering 62 countries over the period from year 2003 to 2007, we find that, international cooperation in enforcement as measured by the indicator of joining the Convention on Cybercrimes, deterred cyber attacks originating from any particular country by 15.81% ~ 24.77% (in 95% confidence interval). Second, joining the Convention also affected the interdependence in cyber attacks from two angels. First, for any pair of country, closer status in joining or not joining the Convention was associated with less negative or more positive correlation. Second, joining the Convention or joining it earlier was associated with lower correlation between countries over time. We discuss the policy implications from our findings to public authorities, cyber insurance companies and organizational users.