Page 150 - CDM-CYBER-DEFENSE-eMAGAZINE-December-2018

If I Use The Word Recidivists, Will They Come?

Recidivist is an interesting word. It means “a convicted criminal who reoffends, especially repeatedly.”
28
The word had common usage in the last century although it started to fall into disuse the last 30 years or
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so. There isn’t another word that aptly describes the behavior identified in the NSFOCUS 2018 H1
Cybersecurity Insights report, which found that out of 27 million cyberattack sources in the first six months
of 2018, 25 percent were repeat attackers or “reoffenders.” These recidivists were then responsible for
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40 percent of all attacks seen during that period.

28 Oxford Dictionary, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/recidivist
29 Google Books Ngram Viewer,
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=o
n&content=recidivists
30 NSFOCUS 2018 H1 Cybersecurity Insights report, 2018, page 6.

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