Interpol is demanding that the world’s governments and business leaders act together to stem the rapidly rising global tide of cybercrime. Speaking this week at the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh, Interpol’s assistant director of cybercrime operations, Bernardo Pillot, urged the world’s governments and business leaders to adopt a more collective approach to online dangers.
Pillot spoke to former heads of state, business leaders, and leaders from the kingdom about the successes cross-border cooperation is now having, with a new international cyber-policy framework already in the pipeline.
“We are very active in the UN [with] ad hoc committee processes and a new cyber convention being negotiated…Because cyber is borderless, we need the ability to act quickly and exchange information to avoid these threats,” Pillot is reported to have said.
Nevertheless, Interpol and other security services are currently facing a tsunami of cybercrime, which is set to cost its victims $8 trillion by the end of 2023, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. Global cybercrime has been growing steadily since the 1990s, but the pandemic coupled with recent political upheavals has accelerated the process.
In the face of this growing global challenge, Interpol is also far from being alone in its pleas for international cooperation between governments and businesses to tackle the problem. Interpol’s plea for intergovernmental action to tackle cybercrime comes hard on the heels of an open letter from the non-profit organization, the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) for the urgent need to stay ahead of risks and the vital role of global industry security standards for artificial intelligence (AI).
Cybercriminals also forging international alliances
This week the US president, Joe Biden, also announced an Executive Order to regulate AI, focusing heavily on several key aspects of cybersecurity, including the use of AI in AI-enabled fraud and deception, in advance of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety Summit in the UK, which is also aimed at forging global co-operation to battle online dangers.
On the other side of the fence, there is now growing evidence that cybercriminal groups are also breaking new ground and are starting to build international partnerships with each other. For example, the English-speaking cybercrime gang, Octo Tempest, which is, according to Microsoft, “one of the most dangerous financial criminal groups”, was recently reported to have teamed up with Eastern European ransomware operation, ALPHV/BlackCat. According to Microsoft, Octo Tempest has progressively broadened the scope of industries targeted for extortion, including natural resources, gaming, hospitality, consumer products, retail, managed service providers, manufacturing, law, technology, and financial services
