Fortinet, Interpol ink threat sharing info deal to combat cybercrime

Hackers had given the organizers of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February this year a scare when a cyber attack paralyzed internet networks and caused communications to fail at the opening ceremony.

FIFA had been warned. Months before the games could begin in Moscow for the 2018 World Cup this month, it had been told to beef up cybersecurity.

At the rate cyber attacks are happening across the world and with the explosion of technology in the past decade, you would think that there’d be a fix by now to the Internet’s biggest scourge: cybercrime.

The reality is that the economic impact of cybercrime is still at a high $600 billion a year, according to a report released by IT security firm McAffee in February 2018.

“Tackling cybercrime cannot be resolved unilaterally by law enforcement alone but is a joint responsibility which requires trusted relationships with the private sector,” Silvino Schlickmann Jr., acting executive director, INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation, said in a statement at the launch of its partnership with cybersecurity solutions provider Fortinet.

INTERPOL, the international organization that facilitates global police cooperation, is being thrust into a brand-new spotlight. After close to a hundred years of fighting crime, it has a new frontier to conquer: the dark web.

Last year, the INTERPOL and its private sector partners, have uncovered a group of online fraudsters behind thousands of online scams totaling more than $60 million and involving hundreds of victims worldwide.

Schlickmann said the partnership with Fortinet would “ensure that law enforcement has access to the most comprehensive threat intelligence necessary to take effective action against cybercrime.”

Under the agreement, both organizations will collaborate to combat cybercrime and threats to privacy globally by sharing threat information.

A threat intelligence expert from Fortinet will be assigned to collaborate with experts at the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) to provide a clearer understanding of the current threat landscape.

The INTERPOL team and law enforcement would use the information to prevent risks to security and privacy.

“Law enforcement, in particular, can also be hampered by the fact that cybercrime often crosses political and jurisdictional boundaries. Actionable threat intelligence with global visibility is the best way to move from being reactive to proactive in a world where cybercrime has no borders,” said Derek Manky, global security strategist, Fortinet.

Before the announcement, the cyber security solutions provider has been an active member of an expert working group within the INTERPOL.

Last year, it was one of several private sector companies that provided support to an INTERPOL-led operation targeting cybercrime across the ASEAN region, which reportedly led to the identification of nearly 9,000 command-and-control (C2) servers as well as hundreds of compromised websites, including government portals.

“As the digital and physical worlds become more interconnected, threat intelligence sharing is becoming an increasingly critical component of any security strategy. This includes collecting and sharing intelligence locally across devices in your own network, sharing threat intelligence between industries or regional peers, or subscribing to global threat feeds,” Manky wrote in a corporate blog post.