Industry and public sector need to cooperate in fighting cybercrime
Further developed collaboration between industry and the public sector is needed to make the internet a hostile environment for cybercriminals, World Economic Forum’s Partnership against Cybercrime stresses in a new report.
A framework for building and sustaining operational partnerships that systematically disrupt cybercrime is needed, the report says. This means further developing partnerships, integrating new technologies and fostering a culture of trust and knowledge sharing.
“Operational collaborations increase the difficulty, costs and risk associated with executing cybercriminal activities. Cross-sector partnerships allow for the pooling of resources, leading to enhanced capabilities that individual organisations might not achieve on their own.”
The report stresses that criminals copy what they see in the legal markets. “Criminals have their own “cybercrime-as-a-service” business model where experienced cybercriminals sell accessible tools and knowledge to help others carry out cybercrimes.”
“This brings more criminals into the cybercrime market by lowering the cost and level of skill needed to be an effective online fraudster and deliver ransomware attacks that can bankrupt businesses and destroy livelihoods.”
“The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimated that 25.5% of the world’s population were impacted by cyber-enabled fraud in 2023.3 The profits this generates for criminals have a wider impact than the immediate victims.”
“The convergence of cybercrime and violent organised crime has also led to a cultural shift, with the new entrants to the cybercrime market less concerned about causing physical harm at scale. For example, in June 2024, a ransomware attack on a blood-test provider prompted the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to make an urgent call for blood donations and rearrange more than 800 planned operations after they lost the service’s ability to match patients’ blood.”
“Often, responses to cybercrime have been fragmented. Existing knowledge of cybercriminal activity, while often deep, has been split across different companies and public agencies. But there are an increasing number of examples where these limitations are overcome.”
“While building cyber resilience is important, purely defensive measures will never be enough on their own. We must also impose costs on cybercriminals to make their efforts less profitable.”
“However, imposing such costs requires a broad spectrum of capabilities resident in different parts of society, including the public, private and nonprofit sectors. As a result, operational collaboration is not a “nice to have” or a “good to do”; it is the core process needed to reduce the impact of cybercrime on our societies”, says Michael Daniel, president and CEO of Cyber Threat Alliance.
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