Today, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Constella Intelligence, Alex Romero, published a joint article with Akshay Joshi, Acting Deputy Head, Centre for Cybersecurity at the World Economic Forum (WEF). The piece analyzes the economics of cybercrime and the incentives that drive cybercriminals to attack individuals, businesses, elections, and public health initiatives. The article can be found on WEF’s Global Agenda.
Constella Intelligence is proud to partner with the WEF, an international organization that aims to improve the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas. At their Centre for Cybersecurity, leaders including governments, businesses, and academic institutions work collaboratively to formulate collective responses to cybercrime that make our hyperconnected world more secure and trustworthy.
In their article, Romero and Joshi discuss the commodification and commercialization of ransomware and disinformation, as well as the significance of the economics of cybercrime, explaining how “economics is driving digitalization – both for businesses and for criminals.” The infographic below illustrates research from Constella’s recently published 2021 Identity Breach Report that uncovered networks of automated bots for sale in underground forums. These are the same digital resources often mobilized at scale to coordinate targeted, hybrid disinformation campaigns that leverage both human and non-human-assisted capabilities.
They note that “as the great digitalization of everything continues, distributed remote workforces and new digital dependencies that touch every facet of personal and professional life present a double-edged sword.”
Citing further data from Constella Intelligence’s 2021 Identity Breach Report, Romero and Joshi explore the commercialization of ransomware and how Ransomware-as-a-Service, also known as RaaS, has emerged in recent years. The article assesses two major technological threats – ransomware and disinformation – and the authors explain these threats’ prevalence by examining the economics of cybercrime itself. Using Constella’s report, they analyze how ransomware impacts small and medium-sized businesses, detail how disinformation and ransomware both showcase the economics of cybercrime, and highlight how “commodification and weaponization of [personally identifiable information] contribute to the commercialization of the building blocks of the disinformation ecosystem and the broader threat economy.”
Constella Intelligence offers industry-best products to rapidly identify threats targeting high-profile individuals to mitigate risks before any damage can occur. Constella understands the incentives that drive the exploitation of vulnerabilities and combines superior threat intelligence for confident decision-making with unparalleled global control and proactive real-time response to anticipate and defeat digital risk. Constella is a trusted partner to some of the world’s largest organizations and institutions, working to protect executives, leadership, and key employees from digital risk and emerging cyber vulnerabilities.
