Helen Keller once said, "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." As the "forum" part of our name implies, we tend to agree with Helen Keller's comment on collaboration. The mission of the Retail Payments Risk Forum (RPRF) is to identify, detect, educate, and encourage mitigation of risk in retail payment systems. We firmly believe that one of the ways to achieve our mission is to collaborate with industry participants, regulators, and law enforcement. And while we convene our own forums to encourage collaboration, ample opportunities for collaboration between law enforcement and the private sector exist beyond the boundaries of the RPRF.

Below are descriptions of organizations that are built on such collaborations.

  • Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC): An organization dedicated to gathering and disseminating reliable and timely information from financial services providers, security firms, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, and other trusted resources related to physical and cyber threats against the financial services community.
  • National Cyber-Forensics &l Training Alliance (NCFTA): A nonprofit corporation with formal partnerships/agreements with more than 40 U.S. private-sector organizations and more than 15 U.S. and international law enforcement or regulatory agencies. The NCFTA enlists subject matter experts from stakeholder organizations to share real-time intelligence regarding cyber threats and supports the development of joint proactive strategies to better identity, mitigate, and ultimately neutralize threats.
  • Electronic Crimes Task Forces: Led by the United States Secret Service, these groups bring together federal, state, and local law enforcement with prosecutors, private industry, and academia for the purpose of preventing, detecting, investigating, and mitigating attacks on the nation’s financial infrastructures. Groups are structured through local field offices and organized in most major metropolitan areas.
  • InfraGard: Led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this association with representatives from the private sector, academia, and state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies is dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States. Like the Electronic Crimes Task Force, InfraGard is comprised of groups organized by FBI field offices in major metropolitan areas.
  • Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG): An organization that seeks to unify the global response to cybercrime across industry, government, and law enforcement through data sharing, education, and standards development.

Each of these groups is different, but the common thread is information sharing between the private sector and law enforcement. This collaboration increases knowledge and awareness of threats and is often required to effectively capture and prosecute the masterminds behind attacks on financial institutions and their customers. I encourage our readers to learn more about and take advantage of these opportunities and others for collaboration between law enforcement and the private sector.

Douglas A. KingBy Douglas A. King, payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed