Last week, leaders from around the world gathered at the 55th Annual World Economic Forum (WEF) Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. This annual event brings together influential voices from governments, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector to explore opportunities and solutions for global improvement.
This year’s theme, “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,” addressed the significant geo-economic shifts and the rapid pace of technological evolution that we are all navigating. Cybersecurity and the imperative to secure our digital world were key topics throughout the event, emphasizing the critical role of strategic collaboration in tackling these challenges.
Increasingly sophisticated threat actors in the evolving cybersecurity landscape
In a world where cybercriminals often operate with a level of efficiency mirroring that of Fortune 500 companies, it is essential that we look to ways we can better collaborate to counter them. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of room for improvement; in 2023, 87% of enterprises reported experiencing at least one breach.
Adversaries are expected to continue embracing bigger and bolder attacks, adding new tactics to their arsenals. As threat actors continue advancing their efforts, organizations must also evolve, adopting a comprehensive and collaborative approach to risk management.
While people, technology, and processes are crucial to enhancing cybersecurity, no individual or organization can have complete insight into all existing threats. In the face of increasing cyberattacks and more sophisticated cybercriminals, building alliances across organizations is necessary to stay ahead.
Critical need for systemic disruption of cybercriminal ecosystems
As the state of cybersecurity continually shifts, no single organization can effectively disrupt cybercrime alone. The importance of disrupting the cybercriminal ecosystem through strategic collaboration was the topic of a panel discussion I participated in along with Philip Reiner, CEO and Founder of the Institute for Security and Technology; Hoda Al Khzaimi, Director of the Center for Cyber Security at New York University Abu Dhabi; and Philip Reitinger, President and CEO of the Global Cyber Alliance. We discussed the challenges we collectively face, suggestions for successful disruption strategies, and best practices and lessons learned from existing initiatives that are already making progress in the fight against cybercrime.
During the discussion, I had the opportunity to share my personal insights from working on a number of different operations through Fortinet’s strategic partnerships with public and other private sector organizations.
How partnerships help secure society
The World Economic Forum’s Cybercrime Atlas is a prime example of a successful public-private collaboration. Fortinet is a founding member of The Cybercrime Atlas, a community of defenders that uses open-source research to map cybercriminal activities and identify joint public and private sector responses to cybercrime. The Cybercrime Atlas is a collaborative effort to build an action-oriented, global knowledge base on cybercrime to support the mitigation and disruption of adversary activities. The group’s members include more than 20 law enforcement agencies, private-sector security companies, incident responders, nongovernmental organizations, financial institutions, and academic partners.
The Cybercrime Atlas launched in 2024, and in its first year of operation, has already made significant progress in disrupting major cybercrime activities. Insights from The Cybercrime Atlas contributed to the success of Operation Serengeti, an effort in which the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) and the African Union Mechanism for Police Cooperation (AFRIPOL) identified and arrested 1,006 members of cybercrime groups operating across Africa.
In addition to its role in helping to take down cybercriminals, The Cybercrime Atlas project also provides a practical, scalable partnership model for public-private collaborations. Effective partnerships can help us identify choke points on the attacker chess board, finding opportunities to meaningfully disrupt cybercrime operations.
Continued progress in the fight against cybercrime
Every year, the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting offers a critical opportunity for public and private entities to discuss potential solutions to pressing global challenges. Collaborative efforts to disrupt organized cybercrime will only become more critical as the threat landscape intensifies.
Cultivating relationships across industries and borders creates trust, and fostering trust paves the way for sharing intelligence regularly to strengthen the chances of collectively outpacing our adversaries.
