An Opportunity to Work Together| APN News

By: Derek Manky, Chief, Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs

Fighting cybercrime is a collaborative effort, with cybersecurity experts, law enforcement, and policymakers teaming up with industries and the public to fight the war on cybercrime. Most people will agree that combatting cybercrime is critical to our society’s digital and structural health, so the opportunity to help has always been there. However, those bad actors know cybercrime is a trillion-dollar business, and the odds of getting caught are low since cybercrime overall has no borders like countries do.

As today’s cyberthreats become more sophisticated and aggressive, with ransomware attacks moving to an affiliate-based, as-a-service model, working together is the only way to get ahead of it. Interestingly, according to a Fortinet ransomware survey, ransomware has become a top threat concern for global organizations. This is just one threat type. Recent episodes have caused massive supply chain infections from just a single intrusion point. And cybercriminals are becoming more well-funded the more advanced they become, with growing business models and supply chains of their own. So how do we create action and execute on the knowledge we’ve amassed studying cybercrime? Simply nodding in agreement is just not enough. Goodwill is one thing, but the time to act is now. The answer is by working together with global partners to raise resiliency, disrupt, and ultimately take down these criminal empires.

A Needle in a Haystack

Cybercrime is now a criminal empire that functions like any other criminal organization, with bosses, managers, and money mules. But the world of cybercrime is a bit more complicated. Take, for example, the number one reason these adversaries don’t get caught: jurisdiction. Many cybercriminals operate…