Fighting Cyber-Enabled Fraud 2025

A systemic defence approach2 Turning the tide on cyber-enabled fraud requires a systemic approach incorporating prevention, protection and mitigation. The Partnership against Cybercrime developed a set of “systemic defence” actions to fight phishing and cyber-enabled fraud. These actions – taking in prevention, protection and mitigation – emerged from an examination of the opportunity space represented by the mapping of the global digital ecosystem’s layers depicted earlier in Figure 1. Effective systemic defence requires a balanced model that maximizes the leverage of upstream interventions while ensuring broad, reliable coverage through downstream measures.40 Drawing from the research and expert consultations, the community derived a strategic systemic defence framework, structured around tangible actions to affect phishing and cyber- enabled crime (see Figure 3). It involves three components, each mutually reinforcing: –Preventive actions focus on structurally reducing bad actors’ ability to acquire, build or operationalize digital infrastructure at the upstream level. –Protective actions focus on building systemic safeguards within downstream services. These measures reduce harm by alerting, shielding and empowering users against fraud, phishing and other forms of cyber-enabled abuse. –Mitigation actions focus on improving the ecosystem-wide capability to identify abuse, enable effective reporting and share actionable signals, while also supporting rapid responses to take down malicious activities from upstream infrastructure and update downstream protection efforts. Systemic defence framework FIGURE 3 Source: World Economic Forum and ISTPrevention Protection MitigationSYSTEMIC DEFENCE Fighting Cyber-Enabled Fraud: A Systemic Defence Approach 11