Cybercrime is on the rise, and organizations worldwide, regardless of size or industry, are feeling the impact. While everyone has a role to play in the broader fight against threat actors, no single individual or organization has insight into all the existing threats. Collaboration across the public and private sectors is paramount if we want to make significant progress in disrupting cybercrime operations.

The threat landscape is growing increasingly sophisticated by the day. For example, the number of unique detections observed in the wild by FortiGuard Labs has risen 68% in the last five years. As a result, working together is more critical than ever. This is especially true as rapidly advancing technologies, geopolitical events, and an emerging economic crisis add new layers of complexity as we strive to defend against our adversaries.

Fortinet has a long history of collaborating with global experts across sectors, pursuing a common goal of making our digital world more secure. The company's role as a founding member of the World Economic Forum's Centre for Cybersecurity and contributions to the Cybercrime Atlas, a joint initiative launched by the organization's Partnership Against Cybercrime (PAC) project, are examples of the many ways the company shows up as a member of the larger cybersecurity ecosystem.

Last week, I attended the Forum's Annual Meeting on Cybersecurity in Geneva, Switzerland, marking Fortinet's fourth year participating in this important event. Over three days, more than 150 cybersecurity leaders and experts from the public and private sectors came together to discuss ideas and collaboration opportunities for combating global cybercrime.

During our conversations, several themes emerged, including the growing importance of cyber resilience and the need to build trust to foster greater collaboration across the public and private sectors. Another topic of interest was future risks, such as quantum computing, that cybersecurity leaders must prepare for now, as we're seeing new advancements and corresponding security challenges emerge at an unprecedented pace.

Enhancing Our Collective Resilience Against Cybercrime

At this year's meeting, I was pleased to lead two sessions, one focused on cyber resilience and another with the CISO community to discuss their priorities for 2024 and beyond.

In an increasingly technological and interconnected business landscape, cyberattacks have the potential to spread quickly across organizations and their supply chains, easily impacting society. As part of cyber resilience, each stakeholder has a vital role in building our collective strength to develop a holistic approach to disrupting cybercrime.

There was conversation about ways to advance intra-organization collaboration, like breaking down silos across cybersecurity and other departments, as well as getting executive support for new programs and tools to enhance an organization's resilience. The topic of cyber resiliency yielded additional collaboration and knowledge sharing that further informs our collective fight against cybercrime, including how private sector organizations can more efficiently share threat intelligence and related knowledge, as well as measurement ideas. Another topic of conversation focused on how cyber and business leaders can work together to successfully address cyber risks. Participants shared intra-organization collaboration suggestions on translating risk levels for various audiences outside the security team, offering ideas on using existing IT frameworks and governance to inform cybersecurity reporting and communication strategies.

CISOs in attendance articulated several other priorities in addition to cyber resilience that are top of mind, such as strengthening supply chain security, developing and implementing standardized incident response regulations and reporting requirements, and effectively securing critical infrastructure. 

Advancing the Cybercrime Atlas Project

Earlier this year, the Forum's Partnership Against Cybercrime group, which includes Fortinet as a founding member, announced the formation of the Cybercrime Atlas initiative. This initiative is a collaborative effort to organize, centralize, and expand knowledge about the activities and operations of cybercriminal groups worldwide, mapping out relationships between these groups and their infrastructures within the related ecosystems. The forum aims for Cybercrime Atlas to become a community for linking experts and facilitating knowledge sharing about new analysis techniques, tools, adversary behavior, and strategic insights.

I'm happy to share that we've made significant progress toward that goal. At this meeting, our three established working groups, focused on investigations, disruption, and governance, conducted in-person meetings and continued to identify and set new milestones for 2024. The Cybercrime Atlas initiative is quickly becoming operational, and we're already working with law enforcement to inform their efforts to pursue prominent cybercrime groups for prosecution.

The Importance of Public-Private Collaboration in Halting Cybercrime

Disrupting cybercriminal organizations requires a global effort built on solid relationships and collaboration across public and private organizations and industries. As part of our corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts at Fortinet, we believe it's crucial to work to reduce cyber risks for society at large to make the world a safer and more sustainable place. Helping organizations individually create cybersecurity resilience is an integral part of this effort. Still, active, ongoing collaboration can help us advance our efforts far beyond what any single entity could accomplish alone.

The great news is that many collaborative initiatives are already helping to disrupt today's cybercrime operations and anticipate tomorrow's risks. In addition to the work already being done with the Cybercrime Atlas initiative, the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC), in partnership with the World Economic Forum, recently launched its Cybersecurity Futures 2030 program, of which Fortinet is also a part. This is a foresight-focused scenario-planning exercise that focuses on how cybersecurity will transform over the next five to seven years and how organizations can ready their defenses to guard against an evolving threat landscape.

Together, we can work to build the comprehensive strategies needed to effectively address cyber risks and enhance our resilience.