Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs highlights the importance of actionable threat intelligence and public-private cooperation to disrupt cybercrime, strengthen investigations, and improve cybersecurity across Latin America.
Cybercriminals do not organize their operations around national borders. They exploit differences in jurisdiction, capabilities, and visibility, moving infrastructure, data, and illicit operations across countries faster than organizations can respond. Addressing this model requires more than collecting information about malicious activity. It requires transforming threat intelligence into coordinated action capable of disrupting criminals, their infrastructure, and the services that support cybercrime.
This challenge shaped the recent 11th meeting of the Americas Working Group on Cybercrime for Heads of Units, which brought together INTERPOL, the World Economic Forum, Paraguay’s National Police, Paraguay’s Ministry of the Interior, and public- and private-sector experts from across Latin America. The meeting reinforced the role of intelligence sharing and cross-border cooperation in addressing cybercrime as a regional challenge, rather than an isolated technical problem.
Ransomware, malware, botnets, fraud, and extortion are often addressed as technical threats. Their consequences, however, extend beyond compromised networks and devices. Cybercrime can disrupt businesses and public institutions, undermine trust in digital services, and affect economies and individuals. These effects make cybersecurity a national and regional concern that requires operational cooperation across sectors and jurisdictions.
The regional threat landscape underscores the importance of that collaboration. Participants in the 2025 meeting identified ransomware, phishing, malware attacks, cyber-enabled financial fraud, the misuse of AI, and cybercrime-as-a-service platforms among their primary concerns.
The group also emphasized structured public-private cooperation, joint cybercrime operations, real-time intelligence sharing, and sustained investment in technical capabilities. This year’s meeting continued that approach, highlighting how the exchange of intelligence can support concrete investigative and operational outcomes.
For organizations operating across multiple markets, the challenge extends beyond identifying threats within their own environments. Criminal infrastructure and attack campaigns can span jurisdictions, requiring coordination between security teams, law enforcement agencies, and international institutions.
Turning Data Into Operational Intelligence
FortiGuard Labs, Fortinet’s threat intelligence division, uses telemetry and threat intelligence to understand how the cyber threat landscape is evolving, identify relevant activity and campaigns, and provide information to support investigations and operations.
The distinction between collecting data and producing actionable intelligence is critical. Indicators of compromise, infrastructure patterns, malware behavior, and connections between campaigns become more valuable when placed in context and delivered in a format that enables action.
For law enforcement agencies, this intelligence can help reveal connections between incidents that might initially appear unrelated. It can also support the identification of infrastructure used across multiple campaigns and inform decisions about when and where to intervene. For private-sector organizations, collaboration with law enforcement and international institutions allows threat information to contribute to broader efforts aimed at disrupting cybercrime.
This distinction is particularly relevant as cybercriminal operations become more distributed. Identifying malicious activity is only one part of the response. Understanding how different actors, services, and infrastructure connect can help organizations and authorities address the systems supporting criminal activity.
The value of threat intelligence, therefore, depends not only on its volume or speed of collection, but also on its operational applicability.
Collaboration Creates Impact When It Leads to Disruption
Threat intelligence sharing is essential, but information exchange alone is not the objective. Its value is measured by whether it helps law enforcement prevent harm, advance investigations, seize criminal infrastructure, disrupt illicit services, or complicate the operations of cybercriminal groups.
The Americas Working Group provides a forum for developing the relationships required to pursue those outcomes. Law enforcement agencies contribute investigative authority and the ability to act through legal processes. International organizations help coordinate efforts across jurisdictions, while private-sector partners provide technical expertise, operational agility, telemetry, and visibility into threats affecting organizations and individuals. Academic institutions contribute research and support the development of the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
These different capabilities serve complementary purposes. Technical intelligence can identify malicious infrastructure, while investigative and legal authorities determine how that information can support coordinated action.
Fortinet’s participation in the Working Group reflects its long-term public-private collaboration with INTERPOL, focused on threat intelligence sharing, capacity building, and support for coordinated efforts to disrupt cybercrime. The collaboration dates back to 2015. In 2018, Fortinet joined INTERPOL’s Gateway initiative, which provides a framework for exchanging threat intelligence with law enforcement agencies.
Fortinet also collaborates with the World Economic Forum. The company was a founding member of the Centre for Cybersecurity, contributes to the Partnership Against Cybercrime, and participates in the World Economic Forum’s Cybercrime Atlas.
These initiatives form part of a broader cooperation model involving industry, law enforcement, and international organizations. By connecting partners with different capabilities and responsibilities, the model seeks to strengthen collective efforts against cybercrime.
