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Cyber crime: The global battle
e-Crime Crackdown - does the UK measure up?

By Nick Heath

Published: Thursday 05 June 2008

USA

Is there a central body to co-ordinate national reporting and investigations of cyber crime?
Investigations across the country are co-ordinated by the FBI. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) provides a central reporting point for national cyber crime.

The global battle against e-crime

1. USA

2. India

3. Australia

4. UK

Cyber policing infrastructure
The bureau's cyber division oversees the national response from FBI headquarters in Washington together with cyber crime squads based in every one of the FBI's 56 field offices.

The cyber division is split into two operational sections, one for cyber crimes and the other for computer intrusions.

There are 92 cyber crime task forces across the country made up, mostly led by the FBI, and composed of local law enforcement, government agencies and support partners.

The FBI encourages people to report all cyber crime to the IC3, the US' largest repository of cyber crime complaints, set up by the FBI, National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Intelligence and expertise are shared between the national cyber division, the cyber crime squads and the cyber crime task forces.

Individual field offices work with state and local law enforcement agencies but most cyber crime is reported directly to the FBI.

Scott O'Neal, computer intrusion head FBI cyber division, said: "To get an operational oversight and to have situational awareness the information must be centralised to connect the dots."

How long has the US had a cyber crime police unit?
The FBI's cyber division has been going for five years but there have been cyber crime units within the bureau since the mid to late 1990s.

The cyber crime units have grown fast within the bureau, from a couple of specialist agents tied to a white collar crime squad to a dedicated cyber squad within every field office.

Resources/expertise
Cyber crime squads based in field offices range from about six to 15 agents, sometimes going up to 20 if they incorporate a task force.

Every field office has technically trained agents and certified field examiners to conduct the onsite forensics. They use a variety of tools to capture the information, mirroring hard drives, collecting, organising and analysing the digital evidence. For larger scale operations information can be brought back to headquarters for analysis.

Each field office has specially trained agents with a particular area of expertise that can be called upon during major investigations to form a Cyber Action Team.

Cyber crime investigations and operational procedures are standardised so an investigation on the east coast will be carried out the same way as one on the west coast.

The type of cyber crime dealt with
The majority of work carried out by the computer intrusion team are criminal intrusions on computers such as hacking and distributed denial of service attacks but it also deals with intrusions relating to counter terrorism and espionage.

The cyber crime section is mainly focused on tackling child pornography but also deals with internet fraud and intellectual property rights investigations.

Local cyber crime task forces will tackle the full range of e-crime investigations.

Partnership with business
The FBI cyber division runs the InfraGard partnership with the technology industry and academics to share information and analysis of cyber crime. It has been running since 1996. It deals with matters relating to criminal, security and intelligence. Every InfraGard chapter has an FBI co-ordinator and each of the FBI's 56 field offices is linked to at least one chapter.