Threat Finance System: A Common Approach to Defining the Problem

Abstract

Globalization has created an environment where access to advances in technology, communications, and transportation transcends international boundaries creating a rich operating space for threat networks to exploit. Threat networks around the globe leverage their geographically dispersed structures to increase reach while mitigating risks to disruption by operating in various environments and domains. Like all networked organizations, threat networks rely on financial structures that are sustainable while providing resilience when faced with inevitable disruption. Increasingly, threat networks pursue options that are decentralized and rely on local placement and access for resourcing while exploiting gaps in various environments in order to establish and maintain their financial systems. Defining the system threat networks use to finance their operations in a clear and repeatable construct supports the common understanding that leads to unified action.