UK sets up cyber crime reduction partnership

In the UK, the home office has announced a plan to pool the skills of the police, industry experts and academics in a Cyber Crime Reduction Partnership (CCRP) to help stamp out cyber crime.

The partnership, announced by security minister James Brokenshire at BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, is expected to ensure that police and other law enforcement agencies stayed a step ahead of online criminals.

Brokenshire said the public perception of cyber-crime had for too long been a lone bedroom hacker stealing money from a bank account, but the reality was that cyber criminals were organised and global, with a new breed of criminals selling 'off-the-shelf' software to aid gangs exploit the public, he said.

The government was committed to tackling the threat and it had already had great success. However, the government wanted to go further, he said, adding that through the creation of the National Cyber Crime Unit within the National Crime Agency and innovations such as the new CCRP, he was confident that criminals could be brought to justice.

According to Graeme Stewart, director of public sector strategy at security firm McAfee, the partnership was a positive move but hoped that the scheme would incorporate smaller organisations as well.

The CCRP had actually been in secret operation since the beginning of March and had seen 19 arrests made to date.

Set to be fully operational in October, the CCRP would tackle all manner of cyber crimes from fraud to hacking, with the government reckoning that one in three people were victim of some sort of online crime last year.

According to Brokenshire, the UK was facing a growing and ever more complex threat, but its response to it had grown too and its ambition was to go further.

The minister went on to add that the draft communications bill, the one that wanted to require ISPs to keep a record of anything and everything users did online in case the police want to check up on them, was vital when fighting the good cyber fight.

The draft bill is now undergoing reworking after the Liberal Democrats, Labour and other members pointed out that the man on the web-street still needed some civil liberties as also a modicum of privacy.