Open issues in cybercriminal profiling

The ubiquity of cyber-incidents across individual and organizational realms suggests the inability of stakeholders to contain its pervasiveness. Reports across law enforcement, industry, and academia have corroborated this suggestion, with estimations of more explosive figures in the next couple of years. Insufficient investigative techniques, amongst others, have been identified as the stumbling block to effectively containing cybercrimes. Criminal profiling has recently been suggested by researchers as an investigative technique that could bring the immense value it has rendered in traditional crime investigations to cybercrime investigations. However, there have been a lot of difficulties encountered in the bid to apply this technique to cybercrime investigations, and researchers generally prefer to use more straightforward techniques. This paper seeks to highlight the technicalities of cybercrime that make the application of criminal profiling to its investigations such a difficult and dreadful undertaking. Recommendations are also provided about a probable solution to encourage more activity in this wanting area.