Turning Intelligence Into Impact: Nisos’s Contribution to INTERPOL’s Operation Red Card 2.0

On February 18, 2026, INTERPOL announced the results of Operation Red Card 2.0, a sweeping multinational law enforcement action targeting online scams across sixteen African countries. The operation resulted in 651 arrests, the recovery of approximately USD 4.3 million in stolen assets, and the identification of more than 1,240 victims. It stands as one of the most significant coordinated cybercrime enforcement actions on the continent to date.

Nisos is proud to have contributed to this effort as a member of the Cybercrime Atlas community, a collaborative initiative hosted by the World Economic Forum that brings together private-sector threat intelligence organizations and law enforcement to map and disrupt global cybercrime ecosystems. We want to take this moment to reflect on why operations like Red Card 2.0 matter – and why the intelligence model behind them represents the future of cybercrime disruption.

The Scale of Transnational Cybercrime Networks

The criminal networks targeted in Operation Red Card 2.0 were not opportunistic lone actors. They were organized, cross-border operations running mobile banking fraud, investment scams, telecom application schemes, and messaging app-based social engineering that victimized thousands of individuals across multiple countries. As INTERPOL noted, many of these schemes involved transnational criminal networks whose members, victims, and infrastructure spanned different jurisdictions, making traditional, nationally siloed law enforcement approaches insufficient on their own.

This is a pattern Nisos sees regularly in our work. The cybercriminals we track and investigate operate with the agility of legitimate global businesses – spinning up infrastructure in one jurisdiction, recruiting money mules in another, and targeting victims in a third. Disrupting these networks requires intelligence that is equally borderless.

Why Cybercrime Atlas Matters

The Cybercrime Atlas initiative, launched by the Partnership Against Cybercrime at the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity (C4C), was created to address a fundamental gap in cybercrime disruption: the space between what private-sector threat intelligence teams can see and what law enforcement agencies can act on.

Private organizations, particularly those of us in the threat intelligence space, often develop deep visibility into threat actor infrastructure, tactics, and networks through the course of our investigative work. But intelligence without an action pathway remains just information. Conversely, law enforcement agencies have the legal authority and operational capacity to arrest individuals, seize assets, and dismantle networks, but they don’t always have the upstream visibility needed to identify and map those networks in the first place.

Cybercrime Atlas serves as a bridge. By creating a structured, trusted framework for private-sector contributors, including Nisos, to collaborate alongside organizations like INTERPOL, it converts fragmented intelligence into coordinated, actionable operational pictures that enable real-world outcomes – like the 651 arrests announced this month.

The Nisos Perspective: Intelligence as a Force Multiplier

At Nisos, our core mission is to provide human risk intelligence that helps organizations and their stakeholders make better decisions and take informed action against adversaries. We investigate threat actors, map their infrastructure and relationships, and ultimately unmask them, producing intelligence designed to drive outcomes – whether that means protecting a client’s executives, attributing a disinformation campaign, or supporting the disruption of a fraud network.

Our participation in Cybercrime Atlas is a natural extension of that mission. We believe that the most meaningful measure of intelligence isn’t the volume of data collected or the sophistication of the analysis – it’s whether it leads to consequences for adversaries and protection for victims. Operation Red Card 2.0 delivered exactly that kind of consequence.

The Bigger Picture: Building a Sustainable Model for Disruption

One operation, no matter how successful, does not solve the global cybercrime problem. The networks disrupted in Red Card 2.0 will attempt to reconstitute. New actors will emerge to fill gaps. The social engineering playbooks that fuel these scams will continue to evolve.

What makes the Cybercrime Atlas model significant is not any single operation – it’s the sustainable, repeatable framework for collaboration that it represents. Each engagement strengthens the relationships, trust, and operational processes that make the next action faster, more targeted, and more effective.

This is something we believe deeply at Nisos. Effective intelligence work is not episodic; it is continuous and relational. The trust built between private-sector intelligence providers and law enforcement partners through initiatives like Cybercrime Atlas compounds over time, creating an ecosystem where threat intelligence flows more freely, action happens more quickly, and adversaries face increasingly hostile operating environments.

Looking Ahead: From Operation to Ongoing Impact

Nisos remains committed to supporting collaborative efforts that translate intelligence into real-world disruption. We are proud to contribute to the work of INTERPOL, alongside our fellow Cybercrime Atlas members, and the law enforcement agencies across Africa and around the world that put themselves on the front lines of these operations.

The value of what we do is ultimately measured not in reports produced or indicators shared, but in outcomes achieved. Operations like Red Card 2.0 demonstrate what becomes possible when the private sector and law enforcement work together with purpose, structure, and trust. We look forward to continuing this work.

Want to learn more about how Nisos helps organizations like yours identify, investigate, and prevent human-driven threats before they escalate? Contact us to start a conversation.