ThreatMetrix Outlines Strategies for Law Enforcement and Businesses to Collaborate to Combat Cybercrime
San Jose, CA (PRWEB) October 28, 2014 -- ThreatMetrix®, the fastest-growing provider of context-based security and advanced fraud prevention solutions, announced today three methods for law enforcement and businesses to collaborate in the fight against cybercrime, continuing its commitment to this year’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) theme, “Our Shared Responsibility,” as well as the fifth week’s theme examining the current state of cybercrime and law enforcement’s involvement.
The theme of NCSAM’s fifth and final week, “Cyber Crime and Law Enforcement,” examines the ever-growing number of cyber attacks on U.S. companies and stresses the importance of law enforcement and businesses of all sizes to join forces to identify cybercriminals and bring them to justice.
Unfortunately, cybercriminals are often virtually impossible to locate due to the use of stolen identities, compromised devices, and masked IP addresses. To heighten the problem, these criminals come from various backgrounds, and range from individuals to entire governments. Law enforcement agencies, businesses and individuals are fighting their own battles against cybercriminals, operating individually making them easy targets if they fail to collaborate on prevention efforts.
“While businesses have a responsibility to protect their customers’ privacy and data, they often lack the resources, knowledge, or both to do so,” said Andreas Baumhof, chief technology officer at ThreatMetrix. “Law enforcement agencies also have difficulties protecting consumers, as they are constantly hampered by incomplete information and jurisdictional challenges. Therefore, both parties need to collaborate on a global level to assure the best resources are available to stop cybercriminals in their tracks.”
In recent years, law enforcement officials and business worldwide have increasingly realized the importance of working together to fight cybercrime. However, for this to momentum to continue, businesses need to take the following steps to help law enforcement bring cybercriminals to justice:
• Share - “Cybercrime is the only crime that is truly international,” said Baumhof. In order to get ahead of the curve information sharing must exist at the business and the government level, while still protecting consumer privacy. Financial and retail industries have already starting to share threat information, but all industries can benefit from collaboration. Many businesses are afraid of sharing customer information with competitors, but through an anonymized global network, they can collaborate without losing a competitive edge.
The ThreatMetrix® Global Trust Intelligence Network anonymizes and encrypts data across 850 million monthly transactions to enable parties on the right side of the war against cybercriminals to identify threats and keep their organizations secure without providing any personally identifiable information.
• Take - Individuals and businesses often do not understand that cybercriminals get away with their crimes because it is much more difficult to secure evidence than it is for physical crimes. In order for law enforcement to prosecute these criminals, businesses must have the capabilities to identify suspicious activity and provide a chain of evidence linked to the crimes. ThreatMetrix has the capabilities build such a chain of evidence and take away cybercriminals’ hiding places through its proxy piercing and device identification technologies, which are used to map online personals to the physical devices used in cybercrime attempts.
For example, ThreatMetrix aided the London Metropolitan Police eCrime Unit in arresting several individuals who were responsible for a large phishing attack in 2012. This was only possible through the collaboration between the law enforcement and business. In working with the London law enforcement, ThreatMetrix assisted in providing evidence that linked to the confiscated devices that contained accounts linking criminals to the phishing crimes.
“The data ThreatMetrix collected from the London phishing attacks helped support the capture and conviction of the cybercriminals,” said Baumhof. “This victory serves an ideas example of how a global network of anonymized trust intelligence can bring down illegal online operations – whether large or small – and ensure that cybercrime ring cannot commit further online fraud.”
• Collaborate – Businesses, consumers and law enforcement working together is the only way to truly defeat cybercrime. Businesses should begin to build relationships with law enforcement officials as soon as they suspect illicit activities on their networks. Doing so enables law enforcement agencies to become better informed about the nature of the crime at hand. Regardless of the size of the crime, it is only a matter of time before that business’ weaknesses are further exposed. By sharing information with law enforcement, businesses are connected to a larger network of law enforcement agencies across borders and boundaries, which decreases the overall security threat of customer and business data being exposed.
In addition to the overall theme of “cybersecurity is a shared responsibility,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security outlined weekly themes to commemorate National Cyber Security Awareness Month throughout October. The themes for this year included:
• Week One – Promoting Online Safety with the Stop. Think. Connect.™ Campaign
• Week Two – Secure Development of IT Products
• Week Three – Critical Infrastructure and the Internet of Things
• Week Four – Cyber Security for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses and Entrepreneurs
• Week Five – Cyber Crime and Law Enforcement
ThreatMetrix proudly supported each week’s theme through the end of the month. To commemorate National Cyber Security Awareness Month, ThreatMetrix signed on as a “Champion” with the National Cyber Security Alliance.
ThreatMetrix Resources
• Share this news on Twitter: It’s the final week of #NCSAM! @ThreatMetrix urges businesses to work w/ law enforcement to catch cybercriminals: http://goo.gl/jvfUFC
• Press Release: ThreatMetrix Announces its ThreatMetrix Global Trust Intelligence Network Has Reached 850 Million Monthly Transactions
• Whitepaper: Combatting Cybercrime – A Collective Global Approach
• ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Prevention Summit 2014
About ThreatMetrix
ThreatMetrix builds trust on the Internet by offering market-leading advanced fraud prevention and frictionless context-based security solutions. These solutions authenticate consumer and workforce access to mission critical applications using real-time identity and access analytics that leverage the world’s largest trusted identity network.
ThreatMetrix secures enterprise applications against account takeover, payment fraud, fraudulent account registrations, malware, and data breaches. Underpinning the solution is the ThreatMetrix® Global Trust Intelligence Network, which analyzes over 850 million monthly transactions and protects more than 210 million active user accounts across 3,000 customers and 15,000 websites.
The ThreatMetrix solution is deployed across a variety of industries, including financial services, enterprise, e-commerce, payments, social networks, government and insurance.
For more information, visit http://www.threatmetrix.com or call 1-408-200-5755.
Join the cybersecurity conversation by visiting the ThreatMetrix blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages.
© 2014 ThreatMetrix. All rights reserved. ThreatMetrix, TrustDefender ID, TrustDefender Cloud, TrustDefender Mobile, TrustDefender Client, the TrustDefender Cybercrime Protection Platform, ThreatMetrix Labs, and the ThreatMetrix logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of ThreatMetrix in the United States and other countries. All other brand, service or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies or owners.
Beth Kempton, Walker Sands Communications, +1 (312) 241-1178, [email protected]
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