Is cybercrime the greatest threat to every company in the world?: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty predicted the impact of cybercrime on businesses globally, and the cybersecurity community agrees she was right.

Ginni Rometty, IBM’s chairman, president and CEO, had the following to say at a 2015 IBM Security Summit in New York City when she addressed CISOs, CIOs and CEOs from 123 companies in 24 industries:

“We believe that data is the phenomenon of our time. It is the world’s new natural resource. It is the new basis of competitive advantage, and it is transforming every profession and industry. If all of this is even inevitable-then cybercrime, by definition, is the greatest threat to every profession, every industry, every company in the world."

That prophetic commentary was shared in a Forbes post, when some vendor and media forecasts put the cybercrime figure as high as $500 billion annually. Last year, the Microsoft Secure Blog reported that The World Economic Forum estimated the economic cost of cybercrime to be $3 trillion worldwide. That was a six-fold jump in cybercrime damage estimates in just one year.

Cybercrime damage costs are now predicted to reach $6 trillion annually by 2021, according to the latest research conducted by Cybersecurity Ventures-a data point that has been corroborated by major media outlets, leading technology vendors, information security associations, universities offering cybersecurity degree programs, industry experts,...