Cyber as an enabler of terrorism financing, now and in the future

The objective of this paper is to conduct a critical analysis of whether there is, or could be an incremental use of cyber in the raising and transfer of terrorism finance, compared against traditional terrorism finance practices already in place. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with subject matter experts. They were initially dismissive of any significant use of cyber within terrorism finance, whilst acknowledging that the lack of quality data means that there may be more terrorism finance activity within the cyber domain than is empirically known. Some participants offered examples of how cyber might be utilised by providing impromptu ‘what if’ scenarios. We suggest that this may be symbolic of how primitive the thought process around the current and future use of cyber in terrorism finance is. It was also acknowledged that the current gap in empirical data might be addressed through bespoke training of both security services personnel and wider organisations in identifying terrorism finance ‘red flag’ indicators.