How Global Information Sharing Can Help Stop Cybercrime

The Cybercrime Atlas is an initiative hosted by the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Partnership Against Cybercrime. While it’s still in prototype stages, it’s being designed to provide a platform for academic analysts, cybersecurity companies, national and international law enforcement agencies, and global businesses to share knowledge about the cybercriminal ecosystem. At its core, the Atlas project is a database about cybercrime. Information could come from government alerts, cryptocurrency analysis companies, platform providers, court records, and publicly available materials — anything the analysts can identify that might be relevant to understanding the entirety of the criminal ecosystem. Analysts could then use this database to generate multiple different views or maps of various parts of the cybercriminal ecosystem. For example, one analyst might be interested in ransom payments and could use Atlas to help understand how illicit funds are moving. Another might be interested in identifying the platforms that appear to host a large number of criminal actors. Another “map” or view might focus on the relationships between different criminal groups. By creating an international information repository based on public data and voluntarily shared information, cybersecurity practitioners can create a tool that will enable them to fight cybercrime more effectively.