What to Expect From Trump Presidency?

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November 7, 2024    

One post-election question pertaining to Donald Trump’s upcoming presidency is how his administration will choose to combat cybercrime, as well as collaborate with international partners to do so.

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Cybercrime continues to exact a toll from American individuals and businesses. Known criminal profits from ransomware exceed $1 billion annually. While many victims never report online crime to police, last year, a record 880,000 individuals filed online crime reports to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, detailing collective losses of $12.5 billion in 2023, due to investment scams, business email compromise and more. Last year’s total is cup 22% from 2022.

As Trump takes office, the country faces well-known adversaries online. “The four nations who are on the forefront of nation-state attacks and/or providing safe cover to organized cybercriminal syndicates remain Russia, China, North Korea and Iran,” said Chris Pierson, founder and CEO of BlackCloak.

“The future administration’s approach to being forthright and firm with these countries and leaders on matters of cybersecurity and the impact of the growing, targeted hacks on U.S. businesses and interests remains to be seen,” said Pierson, who previously served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

Trump is no stranger to combating cybercrime. His first administration updated the National Cyber Strategy for the first time in 15 years. “The administration will push to ensure that our federal departments and agencies have the necessary legal authorities and resources to combat transnational cybercriminal activity, including identifying and dismantling botnets, dark markets and other infrastructure used to enable cybercrime,” it said.

Especially where nation-state attacks are concerned, defending forward – disrupting malicious cyber activity at its source – has been U.S. military doctrine since 2018.

But experts also see blemishes on Trump’s cyber track record, including his axing the top cybersecurity coordinator role in the White House, weakening cyber diplomacy – a core strategy for tackling cybercrime safe havens – and firing the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which helps improve domestic resilience.

Whether the U.S. continues its strategy of naming and shaming cybercriminals it can’t reach, often in Russia, is unclear. Ian Thornton-Trump, a veteran CISO who formerly served with the Military Intelligence Branch of the Canadian Forces, predicts the administration could redirect resources to focus more on China and deemphasize the naming, shaming and disruption of Russian criminals’ operations.

Also unclear is whether the U.S. will continue to take a leadership role in efforts launched during the Biden era, such as the Countering Ransomware Initiative, which now counts dozens of countries as members.

Even if the U.S. chooses to hand the leadership baton to other countries, “honestly, the relationships are going to continue,” Thornton-Trump said. “I can’t see the Department of Justice abdicating its responsibility to bring the perpetrators of crimes against Americans to justice. That’s just not going to happen.”

International cooperation continues to pay big dividends. “Ransomware continues to be a huge problem, and as a result, there’s going to continue to be a motivation for these countries to work together,” said Jen Ellis, who advises the U.K. government on cyber matters, and is a co-chair of the Institute for Security and Technology’s Ransomware Task Force. “I think there’s a recognition that no single country on its own is going to solve the problem, and that there has to be a force multiplier here.”

Philip Ingram, a former senior British intelligence officer, expects to see close cybercrime cooperation continue between international law enforcement, often spearheaded by the FBI and National Security Agency in the U.S., together with their British counterparts, including intelligence agency GCHQ and its public-facing National Cyber Security Centre, together with Dutch, French and “to a lesser extent” German agencies.

“I don’t think Trump’s election will have much impact on cybercrime-battling efforts as the agencies responsible already have fantastic cooperation and are working well together,” he said, saying the agencies exist outside the scope of real political interference.

Such collaboration will be needed more than ever before. “I think we will continue to see an uptick in organized cybercrime coming out of Russian-based groups and a growth in North Korea’s involvement, as more Russian money flows into the country,” Ingram said. “The ransomware threat will continue to grow.”

Whatever the administration’s incoming cyber priorities, of course, even a day is a long time in politics. For all of the administration’s campaign trail pronouncements or signposted intentions, a major cybercrime event on the order of Colonial Pipeline could still rewrite political realities overnight. And as Trump promised earlier this week in his victory speech: “I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve.”