Cybercriminals are leveraging new technologies to accelerate their operations, operate internationally, and expand their attacks through increasingly professionalized criminal ecosystems. And they are not waiting for defenders, policymakers, or law enforcement to catch up.

That reality shaped many discussions at this year’s INTERPOL Partners’ Conference, held at INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France, under the theme “Investing in a Safer World.”

I was honored to represent Fortinet at this year’s conference, actively participating in discussions and reinforcing our strong ties with INTERPOL. I also took part in the main panel, “AI, Intelligence, and the Future of Policing,” led by Neal Jetton, INTERPOL’s director of Cybercrime.

The panel featured experts from international law enforcement agencies, the U.S. government, and the private sector (like me), exploring how AI and emerging tech are transforming criminal activities and rapidly shaping the future of policing and policy making. The panel discussion took place among esteemed participants from all over the world, including representatives from academia, credit-rating agencies, consulates, intelligence agencies, entertainment, nonprofit organizations, fintech, and technology industries to name a few. Organizations representing a range of vertical industries also attended one of the most foremost law enforcement partner conferences in the world, one that is tackling the online and offline world to make it a better place.

A significant takeaway I took from this year’s conference was clear: The future of cybercrime is no longer theoretical. AI is accelerating the speed, scope, and complexity of cyber-enabled crimes, and no single country, company, or agency can address it on its own. Overcoming this challenge depends on building trusted partnerships, sharing intelligence, and translating collaboration into tangible operational results.

A Partnership Built for Action

Fortinet’s partnership with INTERPOL has grown over more than a decade of active collaboration. Fortinet joined forces with INTERPOL in 2015 to help coordinate efforts against cybercrime, support regional security projects, and facilitate intelligence sharing. And in 2018, Fortinet officially became an INTERPOL Gateway partner, strengthening a trusted framework for sharing cyberthreat intelligence between law enforcement agencies and the private sector.

This history is important because successful collaboration relies on trust. Cybercrime investigations often move quickly, span multiple jurisdictions, and rely on data from numerous sources. Law enforcement may see one part of the picture, while private security organizations may see another. And financial institutions, cloud services, telecom providers, or other partners often have crucial information to add. A critical challenge is integrating these signals to enable investigators to see and respond to events more quickly and accurately.

Fortinet’s global visibility and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence play a crucial role in supporting broad disruption initiatives. The same insights used to safeguard customers help law enforcement understand criminal infrastructure, identify malicious activity, and coordinate efforts to combat cybercrime networks.

Recent operations led by INTERPOL highlight the impact of this kind of partnership. Fortinet has played a collaborative role in efforts against cybercrime networks, online scams, mobile money fraud, phishing, and various other crimes. These initiatives underscore an important point: sharing private-sector insights through trusted channels can greatly enhance law enforcement’s ability to translate intelligence into effective action.

AI Is Accelerating Criminal Innovation

During the conference panel, I was asked to discuss how AI is accelerating the speed, scale, and sophistication of criminal activity. This is an area FortiGuard Labs is closely monitoring, and the trajectory is clear: AI is becoming a force multiplier across the cybercrime ecosystem.

When I was getting into security, curiosity about hacking meant digging through forums, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels and websites. In what previously took years of development in order to build effective cybersecurity skills, AI has now hit the accelerator on that trajectory, and it’s not slowing down.

During my portion of the panel, I made a statement about how we all had previously incorporated AI in our daily lives, primarily as useful chatbots. Early on, many humans used chatbots for entertainment to pass time, and a select few took it to the next level and used it as a tool. for good or bad. I then asked the crowd to raise their hands to see if they’d heard of local large language models (LLMs), or heard of Hugging Face, LMStudio, or Ollama.  A few hands out of hundreds were raised.

Participants were surprised to hear the panel insights and observations regarding the sheer speed and flexibility that is available outside of the mainstream, cloud-based LLMs. These were just a few examples of the challenges the INTERPOL Partners Conference sought to bring attention to and address in law enforcement efforts.

The concern is not simply that attackers have access to new, advanced tools. It’s that AI is making existing criminal business models faster, more adaptive, and more accessible. Cybercrime-as-a-service has already lowered the barrier to entry for attackers by providing less experienced actors with malware kits, phishing platforms, credential theft tools, and other capabilities. Now, AI is speeding up this process by helping criminals create more convincing phishing messages, automate reconnaissance, customize social engineering efforts, and increase malicious activities with less effort. 

Today’s LLMs assist threat actors in crafting more convincing lures, translating scams into multiple languages, and personalizing attacks for victims—all of which previously required significant time and expertise. Now that AI can generate convincing phishing and spear-phishing messages, the grammatical errors that once served as telltale warning signs may no longer indicate a potential cyberattack.

AI also aids in coding, identifying vulnerabilities, and automating workflows that facilitate cybercrimes. As these technologies develop, defenders and law enforcement will confront adversaries capable of exploring more methods, acting more quickly, and expanding campaigns across regions more effectively.

This is why public-private collaboration must evolve. Faster threats need faster intelligence sharing. Today’s adaptive criminal ecosystems demand greater visibility. And AI-driven attacks require defenders, policymakers, and law enforcement to consider not only individual incidents but also the infrastructure, services, and incentives that enable criminal operations to expand.

Preparing for Agentic AI

Discussions at this year’s INTERPOL Partners' Conference also looked ahead to emerging developments, such as agentic AI, which is crucial because it points to the future of cyber risk and defense. These AI systems can operate more independently, make multistep decisions, and interact with tools or environments to achieve specific goals. When used legitimately, they assist security teams in analyzing alerts, prioritizing threats, accelerating investigations, and improving response times. However, if misused, these same capabilities can automate elements of cyberattacks, coordinate activities across different tools, or enable malicious actors to scale their operations more efficiently.

Law enforcement and policymakers must proactively prepare before criminal groups can fully deploy these capabilities. This includes investing in technical literacy, developing shared detection methods, implementing responsible AI governance, and establishing cross-sector channels to detect emerging risks early. Additionally, it is crucial that resource-limited agencies not be further marginalized as AI transforms the threat environment and the responses required.

This is where INTERPOL plays a critical role. Criminals innovate on a global scale and are quick to exploit gaps between jurisdictions, resources, and capabilities, so any response must be global as well. By bringing member countries together with trusted industry partners and enabling the timely exchange of critical intelligence, INTERPOL helps more agencies benefit from innovation, not just those with the largest budgets or the most advanced tools.

When Mr. Jetton asked the panel how agentic AI should be addressed from legal, policy, and law enforcement perspectives, I emphasized the importance of fostering strong partnerships between law enforcement and leading AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. I encouraged conference attendees to build collaborative, mutually beneficial relationships that support both technological leadership and responsible innovation, ensuring that advances in AI are accompanied by effective public safety, legal, and policy frameworks.

Moving from Collaboration to Collective Advantage

One of the strongest themes throughout the conference was the importance of going beyond merely symbolic collaboration. Public-private partnerships are only valuable if they enable defenders and law enforcement to achieve tangible, measurable results.

Building trust and effective communication relies on a clear understanding of what information is needed and how it will be used. Effective partnerships also require ongoing engagement before a crisis occurs, so those relationships are already well established through continuous collaboration, established procedures, and mutual confidence in one another’s contributions to a common goal. The strongest partnerships are not formed during an active incident but develop gradually over time.

For Fortinet, this is central to our work with INTERPOL. Our partnership goes well beyond simply providing information after an attack. Through FortiGuard Labs, our global visibility into the threat landscape, and our participation in trusted collaboration frameworks, we provide intelligence that helps identify malicious infrastructure, map criminal activity, and support coordinated disruption.

The broader goal is to make cybercrime disruption more systemic. While individual takedowns are crucial, achieving lasting impact depends on targeting the ecosystems that sustain cybercrime profitability. This encompasses the infrastructure criminals exploit, the services supporting them, the financial channels they depend on, and the operational models that allow them to grow.

Building the Future of Cybercrime Disruption Together

The INTERPOL Partners’ Conference 2026 serves as a timely reminder that the future of policing and cybersecurity is increasingly interconnected. The digital and physical realms are now integrated, enabling cybercriminals, fraudsters, illicit finance, and organized criminal organizations to support one another across borders and platforms.

AI will continue to accelerate that convergence. However, it can also strengthen our collective response if we invest in the right partnerships, capabilities, and frameworks.

Fortinet is proud to continue our support for INTERPOL and the global law enforcement community. Our long-standing partnership is based on the belief that defending customers and countering cybercrime are closely linked missions. The intelligence we gather to protect organizations also assists law enforcement in identifying criminal networks, supporting investigations, and minimizing harm on a larger scale.

I left this year’s conference feeling very encouraged. I liken how the AI space feels today to what the cybersecurity space felt like during my first few years over two decades ago. We are entering a new technological frontier. While AI has become widely recognized for its transformative impact on cybersecurity, most people understand only its surface-level capabilities. There remains a significant gap in public understanding of AI’s full potential—both its benefits and its capacity to be misused. Much as the internet reshaped society over the past three decades, AI is ushering in another era of profound technological disruption that will redefine how we live, work, and secure our digital world.

Although the challenges are significant and increasing, the dedication across public and private sectors is also growing. When trusted partners work together with a common purpose, transparent communication, and a focus on operational results, we’re capable of doing more than just reacting to cybercrime. We can actively disrupt it.