Cybercrime continues to expand beyond traditional malware, fraud, and ransomware operations. Criminal groups increasingly use mainstream digital platforms, encrypted messaging services, social media, and virtual payment systems to recruit, coerce, and exploit vulnerable people at scale.

That reality was underscored by INTERPOL’s recently announced Operation CyberProtect III, a four-day law enforcement “hackathon” focused on how content subscription platforms are used to facilitate human trafficking and sexual exploitation. The operation was co-organized by INTERPOL and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), bringing together 14 officers from seven European countries to analyze websites, social media, messaging apps, and subscription platforms for indicators of exploitation.

According to INTERPOL, Operation CyberProtect III generated dozens of new investigative leads, including the identification of 34 suspicious cases, 18 suspect profiles, and 27 potential victims.

Fortinet is proud to have contributed to the broader public-private collaboration supporting this operation through its leadership in the World Economic Forum’s Cybercrime Atlas initiative. Cybercrime Atlas was named by INTERPOL as one of the organizations supporting Operation CyberProtect III, alongside law enforcement agencies, NGOs, and other public- and private-sector partners.

Cybercrime Atlas: Turning Shared Intelligence into Action

The World Economic Forum’s Cybercrime Atlas is designed to help the global community better understand, map, and disrupt cybercriminal ecosystems. The initiative brings together cybercrime experts from the public and private sectors to leverage open-source research, intelligence sharing, and collaborative analysis to identify threat actor activity and support coordinated responses.

Fortinet is a founding member, launch partner, and active contributor to Cybercrime Atlas. Through this work, Fortinet advances a simple but essential idea: Cybercrime is too distributed, too organized, and too fast-moving for any single organization or government to address alone. Meaningful disruption requires trusted collaboration, operational intelligence, and a shared commitment to turning analysis into action.

Operation CyberProtect III underscores the importance of this model. The operation focused on a growing criminal trend: organized groups using content subscription platforms commonly associated with sexually explicit material to recruit and sexually exploit women, minors, and vulnerable adults. INTERPOL noted that victims may be lured with promises of income and then pressured or coerced into producing exploitative content. In some cases, criminal groups masquerade as legitimate modeling agencies, take control of victims’ accounts, retain most of the earnings, and apply escalating psychological pressure to force victims to produce increasingly explicit material.

The operation also identified several concerning trends, including the use of encrypted messaging platforms to recruit victims, coded language to evade detection, cryptocurrency and other virtual currencies as payment methods, AI-generated fake profiles, and online “coaching” programs that claim to teach individuals how to profit by exploiting women on content subscription platforms.

Why This Operation Matters

Cybercrime and human exploitation increasingly intersect. Cybercrime is evolving into a converged criminal economy that connects online fraud, ransomware, extortion, money laundering, human trafficking, organized crime and, in some cases, state-aligned activity. Digital platforms can give criminals access to victims, payment rails, distribution channels, and anonymizing tools. Paywalled environments and coded language can make detection more difficult, while jurisdictional fragmentation can slow investigations and enforcement.

Public-private partnerships are crucial in this context. Law enforcement offers legal authority, victim protection, and investigative resources. Meanwhile, private-sector cybersecurity teams, technology platforms, NGOs, and research organizations contribute visibility, technical knowledge, infrastructure assessment, and threat intelligence. When these strengths are integrated through organized collaboration, they enable quicker victim identification, better investigative leads, and more effective disruption of criminal activities.

Derek Manky, chief security strategist and global VP of threat intelligence at FortiGuard Labs, says, “Cybercrime extends beyond stolen data or system disruption. It increasingly affects individuals in deeply personal and damaging ways, blending the lines between cybercrime and transnational criminal groups. Operation CyberProtect III highlights the power of trusted public-private partnerships to turn intelligence into tangible action. With tools like the Cybercrime Atlas and ongoing collaboration with INTERPOL, Fortinet continues its long-standing commitment to helping law enforcement and the broader cybersecurity community disrupt criminal networks and safeguard society’s most vulnerable targets.”

Fortinet’s Ongoing Commitment to Public-Private Partnership

Fortinet’s support for Cybercrime Atlas builds on more than a decade of collaboration with INTERPOL. Fortinet has worked with INTERPOL since 2015 and became an official INTERPOL Gateway partner in 2018. Through this relationship, Fortinet has supported coordinated efforts to disrupt cybercrime, contributed actionable threat intelligence, and helped strengthen collaboration between law enforcement and the private sector.

Recent examples include Fortinet’s support for INTERPOL-led Operation Serengeti and Operation Serengeti 2.0, which targeted cybercrime networks across Africa. These operations demonstrated the impact of shared intelligence, coordinated law enforcement action, and private-sector technical expertise in disrupting criminal infrastructure and identifying victims.

The Cybercrime Atlas project extends that model by helping connect diverse partners around a common operational goal: mapping cybercriminal activity and identifying ways to disrupt the people, infrastructure, and financial systems that sustain it.

Scaling the Chain of Disruption

Operation CyberProtect III is another reminder that cybercrime disruption is not a single event. It is a chain of coordinated actions that includes intelligence gathering, analysis, investigation, victim identification, infrastructure disruption, arrests, prosecution, and long-term prevention strategies.

As cybercriminal groups continue to evolve, defenders must do the same. That means expanding collaboration, improving intelligence sharing, and building repeatable models that help law enforcement and the private sector move faster together.

Fortinet remains committed to supporting these efforts through the Cybercrime Atlas, its long-standing partnership with INTERPOL, and its broader mission to make the digital world safer. By collaborating across sectors and borders, the global community can better identify criminal activity, protect vulnerable people, and disrupt the networks that enable exploitation.