By Andy McCue, 18 March 2008 10:00
NEWS
Local police forces do not have the resources or expertise to deal with growing cyber crime and online fraud threats facing businesses today.
That's the unanimous verdict of UK tech chiefs on silicon.com's CIO Jury IT user panel.
All 12 CIOs and IT directors on this week's CIO Jury are backing silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign for a dedicated national police e-crime unit, following the government's decision to hand over the now defunct National High-Tech Crime Unit's (NHTCU) responsibilities to the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca).
silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign is calling for a national UK cyber crime police unit.
The unit would provide leadership and expertise to co-ordinate investigations nationwide and collate reports from police forces across the country, as well as offering a central point of contact for reporting e-crime.
We want to hear your views about this campaign and your experiences of being a victim of cyber crime. Were you happy with the way your case was handled? Make your voice heard by leaving a Reader Comment below or emailing us in confidence at editorial@silicon.com.
Peter Pedersen, CTO at European gaming group Rank, said: "The NHTCU is greatly missed. With the growing importance of ecommerce for the British economy, it is crucial that there is help at hand from a special unit to enforce, protect and help prevent e-crime."
Since the disbanding of the NHTCU businesses and individuals have been left to report e-crime attacks to their local police force.
Peter Russell, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, said: "Local units do not have sufficient resources or skills to deal with some of the threats we are now facing."
One of the threats that needs a co-ordinated police response is online fraud, according to Tony Johnson, IT director at the Zavvi Entertainment Group.
Christopher Linfoot, IT director at the LDV Group, added: "E-crime is complex and difficult to police and can more effectively be dealt with if the scarce and expensive resources needed to combat it are pooled."
silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign has already received backing from the police, politicians, businesses and security experts.
Ian Auger, IT director at ITN, said: "I think it is a specialist area that needs to be dealt with by people who understand it. The unit should be there to offer advice and not just to mop up when things have gone wrong."
Today's CIO Jury was
Ian Auger, IT director, ITN
Neil Bath, IT director, Brewin Dolphin Securities
Mike Buck, architecture manager, Yorkshire Water
Mark Foulsham, head of IT, eSure
Steve Fountain, IT director, Markel International
Tony Johnson, IT director, Zavvi Entertainment Group
John Keeling, director of computer services, John Lewis
Christopher Linfoot, IT director, LDV Group
Peter Pedersen, CTO, Rank Group
Peter Russell, head of IT, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust
Alan Shrimpton, IT director, Avon & Somerset Police
Steve Williams, head of ICT, Sunderland City Council
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Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Haydn Rees
Wouldn't it be easier quicker and cheaper to train a UK-national IT professional with a broad IT background into security, get them DV-clearance, and certification in security audit, and train them to detect and report online crime than to train police officers to do... well, all of the above?
How about this;
Government (probably CESG) sets up revamped well funded training, certification, skills audit, etc. system for IT professionals;
Government makes due diligence of electronic system data and network security absolutely mandatory (on pain of porridge for directors), but make it tax deductible expense;
Companies hire geeks as stay out of jail card;
Geeks secure networks to a professional standard;
Companies get security; Government seen to "prime the pump";
Government gets companies to pay variable implementation cost willingly;
UK becomes highly secure jurisdiction with large highly trained IT security specialist workforce;
E-commerce gravitates to the jurisdiction with the most highly evolved regulatory framework;
IT Security Specialists get high value added jobs which can't be outsourced.
UK Government recognises geek contribution;
Police get high value Criminal Intelligence without having to;
a) pay for it
b) become addicted to caffine
c) study undergraduate Computer Science (i.e. Police continue to do Policing).
Have I missed anything out?
2. Richard Davies
I would agree that the local police cannot handle ecrime at all.
I have an MSc in Computing and rang my local police to report some spam and phishing that I received and traced.
I had all the information available and all the guy told me was that I should install a Firewall!!!!!!!
At least it made me laugh!
3. Phil Young
With first hand experience of certain web sites being cloned and popping up to scam people, I have spent many a happy hour tracking down sources and asking, or should I say lobbying ISP's to block sites. But this sort of activity is only chopping the branches off the tree, we cannot get to the root source ourselves and therefore need to have a dedicated and proficient crime unit than can interact with units across the globe as well as in the UK, after all it is called the WORLD WIDE web.