Adapting cybersecurity practice to reduce wildlife cybercrime

AbstractWildlife trafficking is driving many species to extinction and is overwhelming law enforcement efforts to stop it. At least a 2-fold increase in the number of traffickers who are put out of business is needed to help avoid these extinctions. A cybersecurity-based solution described in this article consists of a large international confederation of criminal investigators collecting intelligence on persons involved in wildlife trafficking, analyzing it, and then recommending to law enforcement (a) cybercriminals to detain, (b) cybercriminals to surveil, and (c) where and when to intercept cybercriminal-initiated wire transfers and shipments of wildlife products. Wildlife traffickers nowadays often use the internet to commit their cybercrimes. Prosecuting such crimes is challenging. Indeed, one of the top five challenges in cybersecurity is to develop methods for pursuing cybercriminals and bringing them to justice through the acquisition of digital evidence that links specific individuals to specific illegal acts. The proposed confederation finds two lists of wildlife cybercriminals to remove. The first is found by computing centrality measures on the statistically estimated