Turning Abuse Signals into Coordinated Action: Strengthening Digital Trust and Internet Resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean

A conversation with Gonzalo Romero, Director of Abuse Signal Coordination (LAC), WhoisXML API

We are pleased to welcome Gonzalo Romero to WhoisXML API as Director of Abuse Signal Coordination for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In this welcome interview, Gonzalo shares his perspectives on Internet abuse intelligence, ecosystem coordination, and digital trust.

Although grounded in his work across LAC, the insights discussed here reflect global challenges and considerations relevant to Internet abuse coordination worldwide.

What attracted you to WhoisXML API at this stage of your career, and why now?

At this stage of my career, I am motivated by impact rather than scope alone. After decades working across critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, and Internet governance, I am most interested in environments where data, expertise, and coordination can materially improve trust at Internet scale.

WhoisXML API represents precisely that intersection. It operates at a unique vantage point in the global Internet ecosystem, where high-quality domain, IP, and threat intelligence data can be transformed into actionable insight, if it is interpreted, contextualized, and coordinated correctly.

The timing is also critical. Internet abuse has become more distributed, more automated, and more jurisdictionally complex, particularly across emerging and rapidly growing regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). While detection capabilities have advanced significantly, coordination and resolution mechanisms have not kept pace.

What attracted me to WhoisXML API is not only the depth and breadth of its data assets, but the opportunity to help bridge that gap: to translate abuse signals into informed decisions, coordinated action, and measurable improvements in stability, security, and resilience (SSR) across the ecosystem.

This role allows me to apply lessons learned from managing and later operating a national ccTLD, engaging with registrars, content and telco providers, CERTs, CSIRTs, and authorities, and working under real operational and reputational constraints, now amplified by the scale and reach of a global intelligence platform.

From your experience leading stability, security, and resilience for the .CO registry and engaging closely with registrars and key stakeholders, what are the main factors that make coordination effective across the domain ecosystem?

Effective coordination across the domain ecosystem is not primarily a technical challenge; it is an operational and governance one. My experience leading stability, security, and resilience (SSR) for the .CO ccTLD demonstrated that coordination only works when several foundational conditions are in place.

First, roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined and understood. Registries, registrars, hosting providers, DNS operators, and security teams each control different layers of the stack. Coordination breaks down when expectations are misaligned or when actors are unsure of their authority and obligations.

Second, coordination must be anchored in enforceable policy frameworks. Clear Acceptable Use Policies, abuse classifications, escalation paths, and response timelines create a shared operational language. In the .CO ecosystem, this policy backbone was essential to move from detection to action without friction or ambiguity.

Third, trust-based engagement must be supported by evidence and consistency. Effective coordination depends on long-term relationships with registrars and stakeholders, built through predictable processes, proportional responses, and verifiable case closure, not ad hoc pressure or informal requests.

Fourth, coordination requires bridging technical signals with Internet governance mechanisms. Many organizations are proficient at identifying indicators of compromise or malicious domains, but far fewer understand how to navigate the Internet governance ecosystem to resolve incidents. Knowing who to engage, when, and under which framework is often the decisive factor.

Finally, human judgment remains essential. Automation and large-scale data analysis are indispensable, but real-world abuse cases frequently involve legal constraints, jurisdictional boundaries, and reputational risk. Effective coordination requires experienced judgment to balance speed, proportionality, and due process.

When these elements align, coordination becomes a repeatable operational capability, one that sustains trust, reduces systemic risk, and strengthens resilience across the domain ecosystem.

Why is the LAC region strategically important to the global DNS abuse and threat landscape today?

The LAC region is strategically important to the global DNS abuse and threat landscape because it sits at the intersection of rapid digital growth, structural asymmetries in governance, and increasing abuse exploitation by global threat actors.

From an infrastructure perspective, LAC has experienced significant expansion in Internet adoption, domain registrations, hosting services, and cloud usage over the past decade. This growth has created a larger and more diverse digital surface, one that is deeply interconnected with global networks and supply chains.

At the same time, the region exhibits uneven maturity in abuse governance and coordination. While many organizations, CERTs, CSIRTs, and security teams possess strong technical detection capabilities, there is often limited alignment across registries, registrars, hosting providers, ISPs, and public authorities. These gaps create friction in incident resolution and make certain parts of the ecosystem more attractive for abuse persistence rather than rapid mitigation.

LAC is also frequently leveraged as part of global abuse chains rather than acting in isolation. Malicious campaigns may involve domains registered in one jurisdiction, hosted in another, and targeting victims elsewhere. This makes the region highly relevant not only for local security, but for global DNS abuse containment and disruption efforts.

Another critical factor is visibility. Fragmented intelligence and inconsistent reporting across the region make it difficult to establish a unified, evidence-based picture of DNS and content abuse trends. As a result, global threat assessments often underestimate or mischaracterize regional dynamics.

These conditions position LAC as both a challenge and an opportunity. With improved coordination, shared intelligence, and stronger integration between technical signals and governance mechanisms, the region can play a decisive role in strengthening global Internet trust and resilience.

This is precisely why coordinated abuse intelligence, -grounded in local context but aligned with global standards-, is essential. LAC is no longer a peripheral actor in the threat landscape; it is a strategic component of the global Internet ecosystem.

From an advisory perspective, what do you see as the biggest gaps in how organizations approach Internet abuse intelligence?

From an advisory and operational perspective, the biggest gaps in how organizations approach Internet abuse intelligence are not primarily technical: they are structural, procedural, and coordination-related.

Most organizations today are quite effective at detecting abuse signals. They have access to indicators of compromise (IOCs), threat feeds, monitoring platforms, and analytics tools capable of identifying malicious domains, IP addresses, infrastructure patterns, and campaign behaviors. Detection, in isolation, is no longer the main challenge.

The first major gap is the disconnect between detection and resolution. Many teams can identify abuse but lack a clear, repeatable path to act on it within the Internet governance ecosystem. Questions such as who owns the namespace, which actor has enforcement authority, how to engage registrars or hosting providers, and what constitutes due process are often unclear or misunderstood.

A second gap lies in limited understanding of Internet governance roles and boundaries. Organizations frequently treat the domain ecosystem as a homogeneous space, without distinguishing between ccTLDs and gTLDs, registry versus registrar responsibilities, or the contractual and policy frameworks that govern abuse handling. This leads to ineffective escalation, delayed mitigation, or actions that are technically correct but operationally misaligned.

The third gap is fragmentation of intelligence. Abuse data is often siloed across vendors, CERTs, CSIRTs, SOCs, and private organizations, each producing partial views of the threat landscape. Without coordinated signal correlation and shared context, organizations struggle to build an accurate, evidence-based understanding of abuse trends, especially at regional scale.

Another critical gap is the lack of standardized operational playbooks that integrate intelligence with action. Many teams stop at reporting or alerting, rather than driving structured workflows that include prioritization, registrar engagement, evidence handling, response tracking, and verifiable case closure.

Finally, there is an overreliance on tools and an underinvestment in coordination. Internet abuse is not resolved by platforms alone; it is resolved through disciplined collaboration across technical operators, policy frameworks, and trusted relationships. Where those coordination mechanisms are weak, abuse persists, even when signals are abundant.

Closing these gaps requires a shift from intelligence as information to intelligence as coordinated action. Effective abuse intelligence must connect signals to governance, operations, and accountability across the ecosystem. That is where meaningful impact on SSR is ultimately achieved.

What separates organizations that successfully turn abuse signals into informed decisions from those that simply collect more data?

The difference between organizations that successfully turn abuse signals into informed decisions and those that merely accumulate more data lies in discipline, context, and coordination, not in the volume of information they collect.

Organizations that excel understand that abuse signals are not decisions by themselves. Signals are inputs that must be interpreted, validated, prioritized, and acted upon within a defined operational and governance framework. Data without decision context quickly becomes noise.

A key differentiator is the presence of clear decision models. Mature organizations define what matters, why it matters, and what action is expected when specific signals appear. They connect indicators to risk, risk to impact, and impact to accountable actions. Less mature organizations continue to chase more feeds, more dashboards, and more alerts without improving outcomes.

Another critical factor is ecosystem awareness. Effective organizations understand where they sit within the Internet ecosystem and how decisions propagate across it. They know which actors can act on which signals, how to engage them, and how to align technical evidence with policy, contractual, and operational realities. Organizations that lack this awareness tend to over-escalate, misroute incidents, or stall at the reporting stage.

Successful organizations also invest in structured workflows rather than ad-hoc responses. They use playbooks, prioritization criteria, and feedback loops that turn signals into repeatable, auditable decisions. This allows them to learn over time, reduce uncertainty, and continuously improve response quality.

Finally, organizations that convert signals into decisions recognize that trust is a decision-making asset. They cultivate long-term relationships with registrars, CERTs, CSIRTs, and other ecosystem partners, enabling faster validation, coordinated response, and credible resolution. Those relationships cannot be replaced by tools or data alone.

In short, data-rich organizations focus on detection; decision-capable organizations focus on outcomes. The latter treat abuse intelligence as a governance and coordination function, not just a technical one, and that is what ultimately enables stability, security, and resilience (SSR) at Internet scale.

What role should automation and AI play in DNS abuse intelligence, and where is human judgment still essential?

Automation and AI play a critical and indispensable role in DNS abuse intelligence, particularly in scale, speed, and consistency. At Internet scale, it is simply impossible to identify patterns, correlations, and emerging threats across millions of domains, DNS records, and infrastructure relationships without advanced automation and machine-assisted analysis.

AI-driven systems excel at tasks such as signal aggregation, anomaly detection, clustering of related indicators, and prioritization based on historical behavior and risk patterns. They significantly reduce detection latency and help surface relationships that would otherwise remain invisible to human analysts. In this sense, automation is essential for seeing the problem.

However, automation alone is not sufficient to decide or act correctly.

Human judgment remains essential in interpreting signals within their broader operational, legal, and ecosystem context. DNS abuse cases often sit at the intersection of technical evidence, contractual obligations, jurisdictional constraints, and proportional response. Determining whether a domain represents malicious intent, collateral damage, misconfiguration, or legitimate use frequently requires contextual understanding that AI systems do not yet possess.

Human expertise is also critical in coordination. Engaging registrars, hosting providers, CERTs, CSIRTs, and authorities requires trust, credibility, and nuanced communication. These interactions depend on experience, discretion, and judgment, capabilities that cannot be automated.

The most effective model is therefore a hybrid one: automation and AI handle scale, detection, correlation, and prioritization, while humans provide validation, decision-making, escalation, and accountability. In mature organizations, AI accelerates insight, but humans remain responsible for outcomes.

Ultimately, SSR depend not just on identifying abuse quickly, but on responding correctly. Automation makes response possible at scale; human judgment ensures it is proportionate, lawful, and effective.

Why is coordinated abuse reporting particularly challenging in LAC, and how can this improve?

Coordinated abuse reporting in LAC is particularly challenging because the region combines high exposure to Internet abuse with structural fragmentation across technical, institutional, and governance layers.

From a technical perspective, many organizations in the region are capable of detecting abuse signals and indicators of compromise. However, detection is often disconnected from clear reporting paths and decision authority. Signals are identified, but it is not always evident who should act, how quickly, or under which framework.

A major challenge lies in ecosystem fragmentation. The Internet abuse lifecycle spans multiple actors (registries, registrars, hosting providers, ISPs, cloud platforms, CERTs, CSIRTs, law enforcement, among others) yet coordination mechanisms across these actors are often informal, inconsistent, or reactive. In many cases, organizations operate in silos, each with partial visibility and limited mandate to drive resolution.

Governance asymmetry further complicates coordination. Some actors operate under strong contractual and policy frameworks, while others rely on voluntary cooperation or informal trust networks. This creates uneven response capabilities and uncertainty around escalation, evidence handling, and proportional action.

Additionally, reporting practices across the region lack standardization. Different organizations use different taxonomies, thresholds, and evidentiary requirements, making it difficult to aggregate signals into a coherent regional picture of abuse and risk. As a result, public and private reports often describe different realities using incompatible data.

Improvement begins with coordination-first thinking. Effective abuse reporting requires shared definitions, trusted channels, and clear accountability models that link signals to action. This includes aligning technical intelligence with policy frameworks, establishing predictable engagement models with registrars and infrastructure providers, and strengthening collaboration with national CERTs and sectoral CSIRTs.

At a regional level, initiatives that emphasize signal normalization, cross-actor coordination, and decision-oriented intelligence can significantly raise effectiveness. When abuse reporting is treated not as an isolated technical task but as a shared ecosystem responsibility, LAC can move from fragmented response to collective resilience.

Ultimately, improving coordinated abuse reporting in LAC is less about acquiring more data and more about building the trust, structures, and operational discipline needed to turn signals into timely, proportionate decisions.

What role can Internet governance communities play in improving cybersecurity outcomes?

Internet governance communities play a critical but often misunderstood role in improving cybersecurity outcomes. Their value does not lie in direct enforcement or technical operations, but in enabling the coordination, norms, and trust frameworks that make effective security action possible at Internet scale.

Cybersecurity challenges, particularly DNS and infrastructure abuse, rarely sit within the control of a single organization or jurisdiction. They span registries, registrars, hosting providers, network operators, security teams, and public authorities. Internet governance communities provide the neutral spaces where these diverse actors can align on shared principles, responsibilities, and expectations.

One of their most important contributions is the development of common language and baselines. Through policy discussions, best practices, and community consensus, governance bodies help establish shared definitions of abuse, proportional response models, and expectations around due diligence and accountability. This reduces ambiguity and friction during real-world incident response.

Governance communities also act as trust multipliers. By fostering long-term relationships across technical operators, policymakers, and civil society, they enable cooperation that would be difficult to achieve through bilateral or ad-hoc engagement alone. In abuse response, trust often determines whether coordination happens quickly, or not at all.

Importantly, these communities help bridge the gap between technical intelligence and public interest considerations. They provide context around human rights, due process, jurisdictional boundaries, and systemic risk, ensuring that cybersecurity measures strengthen -not undermine- the openness and stability of the Internet.

For regions such as LAC, active participation in mature Internet governance communities such as LACNIC, LACTLD and LACIGF is especially valuable. It helps align local realities with global standards, amplifies regional voices in global decision-making, and accelerates the transfer of operational lessons across ecosystems.

Ultimately, governance communities do not replace technical controls or enforcement mechanisms; they make them more effective. By reinforcing coordination, shared responsibility, and trust, they create the conditions under which cybersecurity efforts can achieve durable, ecosystem-wide impact.

If you could leave security leaders with one message about Internet abuse and digital trust, what would it be?

My message would be simple: digital trust is not a static attribute; it’s an outcome of continuous, disciplined coordination.

Internet abuse is not solved by tools alone, nor by isolated actors operating in silos. It is addressed when signals are interpreted with context, decisions are made with accountability, and actions are coordinated across the ecosystem with proportionality and respect for shared responsibilities.

Security leaders should recognize that trust at Internet scale is built operationally, day by day. It depends on clear governance frameworks, credible engagement with partners, and the ability to balance speed with judgment, automation with human responsibility.

The organizations and regions that succeed will not be those that see the most signals, but those that act on them wisely, turning intelligence into decisions that strengthen SSR for everyone.

Digital trust is not declared; it is earned through coordination, consistency, and integrity. And in an increasingly interconnected world, that trust is a shared responsibility.

What closing perspective would you like to share on Internet abuse coordination and digital trust?

Internet abuse and digital trust are no longer regional challenges; they are global, systemic issues shaped by how well we coordinate across borders, actors, and layers of the Internet ecosystem.

What we see in Latin America and the Caribbean is not an exception, but a clear reflection of broader dynamics affecting the Internet worldwide. Fragmentation, jurisdictional complexity, and the growing gap between detection and effective resolution are challenges shared across regions. Because the Internet is deeply interconnected, weaknesses in coordination in one part of the world inevitably have consequences far beyond it.

Progress will not come from tools alone. It will come from aligning high-quality intelligence with clear governance, disciplined coordination, and accountable decision-making across the ecosystem. When abuse signals are treated not merely as alerts, but as inputs to informed, collective action, they become a catalyst for meaningful and durable change at global scale.

At WhoisXML API, and through coordinated abuse signal initiatives, we are committed to supporting this evolution by working alongside ccTLDs and gTLD operators, registrars, CERTs, CSIRTs, security teams, and authorities worldwide. The objective is to help transform intelligence into decisions, and decisions into sustained digital trust.

From my work coordinating abuse signals in LAC, the lesson is clear and broadly applicable: resilience does not emerge from isolated responses, but from shared responsibility and consistent collaboration. Strengthening stability, security, and resilience (SSR) is not a one-time effort; it is an ongoing commitment by all who depend on the Internet.

Digital trust is built together. And with the right coordination, discipline, and intent, regions like LAC can help inform global approaches to building a more secure, resilient Internet for everyone.