Partnership against Cybercrime INSIGHT REPORT

The report argues that traditional government-led law enforcement is insufficient to combat the scale and speed of cybercrime, which is estimated to steal $600 billion annually. It advocates for a paradigm shift toward a distributed, three-level global architecture consisting of a strategic global partnership, permanent coordination nodes (such as INTERPOL and Europol), and short-term, mission-driven 'Threat Focus Cells' to dismantle criminal infrastructure. To facilitate this, the report defines six principles for sustainable cooperation, including shared narratives and trust-building, and emphasizes the need for 'disruption'—massively disabling malicious technical infrastructure—to raise the cost and risk for cybercriminals.

• Cybercrime represents a massive global economic threat, with estimated annual thefts of $600 billion from governments, companies, and individuals, and projected company revenue losses of $5.2 trillion between 2019 and 2023.
• The COVID-19 pandemic expanded the cybercrime attack surface by increasing dependency on digital infrastructure and remote working, leading to a rise in COVID-19 themed phishing, disruptive ransomware, and the registration of approximately 200,000 suspected malicious domains by June 2020.
• Traditional law enforcement efforts are limited by the transnational nature of cybercrime, lack of resources, and low reporting rates; research in the United States suggests that less than 1% of cybercrime results in an arrest.
• The report identifies six core principles to enable sustainable public-private cooperation: embracing a shared narrative, long-term strategic alignment, trust-building behaviours, systematizing cooperation, ensuring value for participation, and respecting concerns and challenges.
• A paradigm shift is needed toward 'disruption'—the massive disabling of malicious technical infrastructure and assets—to raise the cost of criminal activity, rather than relying solely on the traditional model of attribution and prosecution.
• The proposed global architecture for cooperation is a distributed, three-level system: a strategic Global Partnership for overarching narrative and commitment; Permanent Nodes (existing NGOs and organizations) to provide infrastructure and coordination; and Threat Focus Cells (TFCs) for short-term, operational 'sprints' against specific targets.
• Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), such as homomorphic encryption and federated analysis, are highlighted as tools that can reduce risks associated with information sharing in regulated environments by allowing computation over encrypted data.

APA

World Economic Forum (2020). Partnership against Cybercrime INSIGHT REPORT. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Partnership_against_Cybercrime_report_2020.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Partnership against Cybercrime INSIGHT REPORT. 2020. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Partnership_against_Cybercrime_report_2020.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Partnership against Cybercrime INSIGHT REPORT |date=November 2020 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Partnership_against_Cybercrime_report_2020.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2020partnership, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Partnership against Cybercrime INSIGHT REPORT}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2020}, month = nov, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Partnership_against_Cybercrime_report_2020.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }