Cybersecurity at WEF Annual Meeting in Davos

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos shed light on the expanding scope and complexity of the cybercrime system. Information security experts emphasized the need to enhance the capabilities of cyber defenders. Jürgen Stock, the Secretary-General of the International Criminal Police Organization, stressed the need for a coordinated global response to cyber threats. With the exploitation of cybercrime in the digital economy, the industrial sector, governments, and legal entities find themselves in a race to keep up with these developments.
The problems of the cybercrime system increased with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, witnessing a significant rise in internet crimes and phishing scams. Malicious email domain registrations increased by 22%, while the use of ransomware and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks rose significantly. In October 2023, Google announced the thwarting of the largest DDoS attack ever recorded, peaking at 398 million web page requests per second.
As a result, the costs of cybercrime for targeted companies and institutions have increased. The global average cost of data breaches reached $4.45 million last year, the highest ever recorded, according to the latest research by IBM.

Through the dedicated sessions on this topic at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, experts in the private sector, law enforcement, and academia emphasized the importance of security by design in enhancing cyber resilience. This concept involves building network security protocols into software and hardware products during the initial development stage. This approach allows for the inclusion of security measures at every operational stage and reduces the likelihood of security vulnerabilities during development and usage.
Collaboration is crucial in combating cybercrime as it transcends national borders. The international community must begin to consider the processes that can be put in place to ensure mutual support and defense of public infrastructures. Increased coordination between US and European cybersecurity agencies has been achieved through the signing of a new working agreement. The agreement between the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the United States (CISA) includes the exchange of best practices, capacity building, and increased coordination regarding the protection of critical infrastructure.
As mentioned earlier, we can say that the annual Davos meeting has raised the issue of cyber security and the expansion of the cybercrime system. It emphasized the need for a coordinated global response and discussed key strategies related to cybersecurity, such as security by design and increased cooperation as international measures through which the global community can effectively enhance cyber resilience and counter the escalating threats it faces.

*Member of the World Economic Forum