Help us find the fraudsters, police ask business

The UK's new e-crime unit wants industry to help out in the battle against online fraud.

Police are now in talks with the CBI and other industry bodies about using online investigators at banks and retailers to help spot the origin of large attacks on their customers and pass the details to the Police Central E-crime Unit (PCeU) for police investigation.

The PCeU will co-ordinate law enforcement of all online offences and lead national investigations into the most serious e-crime from spring next year.

Police are talking to banks and retailers to convince them it will be in their interest to provide the resources needed to make the PCeU effective, as the unit is seen as crucial in combating online threats to their business and customers.

Detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie, joint architect of the PCeU, said it is a priority for police forces nationwide to get ready for an influx of cyber crime reports when the National Fraud Reporting Centre (NFRC) goes live in summer 2009.

The NFRC will provide a single phoneline and website for reporting all incidents of fraud, including online fraud. The centre will also work hand-in-hand with the PCeU as a central contact point for individuals and companies targeted by cyber criminals.

"It is anticipated that there will be three to four million reports a year coming from the reporting centre and we need law enforcement to be fit for purpose," McMurdie told silicon.com.

Highlighting the supporting role that business will need to play, she added: "For example, we do not want to simply receive reports that 2,000 customers have been victims of online fraud - we want reports where businesses have identified that these attacks have come from the same IP address and this is where the money is being sent to.

There have been questions as to whether £7m put into the e-crime unit will be sufficient and whether it will be sufficiently resourced to do the job in hand.

But McMurdie said: "We have had substantial expressions of interest from industry in providing funding, hardware, accommodation and anything that would help in building this unit. We could probably do with more money but the focus at the moment is to capitalise on what we have got."

Businesses meanwhile report a growing threat from web criminals. According to recent research by the Corporate IT Forum, the majority of UK businesses, 65 per cent, have seen an increase in cyber crime attacks, with a quarter having suffered a DDoS attack or had their corporate systems infected by malware.

A report by security vendor McAfee also found that there is a risk that cyber crime may further slow the speed of UK economic recovery and McMurdie echoed concerns that a failure to effectively combat cyber crime will damage Britain's commercial appeal.